'Stupid;' NC Sen. Tillis lashes out at Stephen Miller over Greenland claim

Danielle Battaglia, The News & Observer (Raleigh) on Jan 7, 2026

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“Amateurs” and “stupid.”

Those are the words Sen. Thom Tillis used to describe people like White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller on the Senate floor Wednesday afternoon after hearing an interview Miller gave on CNN about taking over Greenland.

“I’ve got a couple of buddies that call me cranky,” Tillis said in his floor speech. “You know what makes me cranky? Stupid. What makes me cranky is people who don’t do their homework.”

Tillis, a Republican from Huntersville, co-chairs the Senate NATO Observer Group. And he was set off when he heard Miller say in an interview that, “Greenland should be part of the United States.”

Miller went on to say, “that’s the formal position of the U.S. government.”

“That is absurd,” Tillis said, after quoting Miller, an alumnus of Duke University.

Greenland is an autonomous territory of 57,000 people, belonging to Denmark, a NATO ally. It sits just northeast of Canada and is the world’s largest island.

“The real question is, by what right does Denmark assert control over Greenland?” Miller said on CNN. “What is the basis of their territorial claim? What is their basis of having Greenland as a colony of Denmark? The United States is the power of NATO, for the United States to secure the Arctic region, to protect and defend NATO and NATO interests.”

Over the weekend, President Donald Trump ordered a large-scale attack on Venezuela, capturing the South American country’s president to stand trial in New York on narcoterrorism charges.

Then Trump turned his attention to Greenland. There’s been assertions over the past few days that Trump plans to either buy the island or take it by force.

“What makes me cranky is when we tarnish the extraordinary execution of a mission I fully support in Venezuela by turning around and making insane comments about how it is our right to have territory owned by the Kingdom of Denmark,” Tillis said.

“Folks, amateur hour is over. You don’t speak on behalf of this U.S. senator or the Congress,” Tillis said. “You can say, it may be the position of the president of the United States that Greenland should be a part of the United States, but it’s not the position of this government, because we are a coequal branch, and if that were to come to pass, there would be a vote on the floor to make it real. Not the surreal sort of environment that some deputy chief of staff thinks was cute to say on TV.”

NATO alliance and Article 5 response

In 2018, Tillis, along with Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat from New Hampshire, reestablished the Senate NATO Observer Group, a bipartisan group focused on strengthening Congress’ work with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

NATO began in 1949 following World War II with a military alliance of countries in Europe and North America. Those countries agree to defend one another if they are attacked, which is known at the Article 5 commitment.

As part of Tillis and Shaheen’s work, they frequently travel to NATO and security conferences and met with nearly every leader of what is now 32 countries.

Tillis reminded his colleagues that only once in NATO’s 45-year history has NATO allies responded to the Article 5 commitment. That was to aid the United States in Afghanistan following 9/11.

And Tillis said Denmark was a disproportionately high contributor in Afghanistan, deploying more than 18,000 troops.

Dozens of soldiers “lost their lives fighting alongside American soldiers, defending our freedom, holding the Taliban and Al-Qaeda responsible for the events of Sept. 11,” he said. “Denmark suffered over six times the fatality rate of Germany and more than three times the fatality rate of France, matching or exceeding losses much larger allies with far greater resources.”

Tillis added that Denmark has shown “a serious commitment” both to NATO and the United States.

Advising Trump

Tillis said if taking Greenland was Trump’s idea, his advisers should be pointing out the importance of the NATO alliance to the United States and how this could jeopardize it. With 17 military installations on Greenland, he said, maybe ”they’d be happy to have us back. We could do it without taking over a NATO country.”

But Tillis said he wonders if someone like Miller told Trump, “This could be cool. Let’s take over Greenland.”

“That’s stupid, too,” Tillis said. “I want good advice for the president, because I want this president to have a good legacy. This nonsense is a distraction from the good work he’s doing, and the amateurs who said it was a good idea should lose their jobs.”

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