Tillis gives civics lecture from a glass house

Sen. Thom Tillis has either a short memory or Trumpian levels of gall. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev asserted that in signing sanctions against Russia, President Trump’s administration “has shown its total weakness by handing over executive power to Congress in the most humiliating way.” It was a preposterous statement, true enough, although Trump didn’t help matters by criticizing the sanctions bill while investigators probe allegations that Russia tried to influence the 2016 election in Trump’s favor.

But Tillis stepped up to lecture the prime minister on democracy, replying to a Medvedev tweet by saying, “... the US has three co-equal branches of gov’t, a concept you’re clearly not familiar with under the Putin dictatorship.”

OK, but what about Tillis as speaker of the N.C. House joining with Phil Berger, president pro-tem of the state Senate, to run roughshod over then-Gov. Beverly Perdue and treat the executive branch as if it didn’t exist, and simply ignoring any ideas coming out of the governor’s office? He and Berger could not have cared less about the separation of powers, just as Berger and Tillis’ successor Tim Moore have cut funding for the attorney general and for the governor’s office and tried to strip appointive power from Gov. Roy Cooper.

Tillis took a fair shot at the Russians. But he might not have been the most credible person to take it.

This story was originally published August 3, 2017 at 12:30 PM with the headline "Tillis gives civics lecture from a glass house."