Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, facing an impeachment vote in Congress, punctuated a week-long bid to save his job with a rare Pentagon news conference on Tuesday during which he appealed directly to President Donald Trump and Republican allies.
Whether Hegseth remains in office has become a central question since voters handed the GOP resounding defeats in last week’s midterm elections, chiefly over their disapproval of the Iran war.
From the lectern, Hegseth seemed acutely aware of the job audition he was undergoing, noting that there was never an impeachment vote for Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin during the Biden administration despite the chaotic fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban in 2021. Hegseth called the effort to remove him from office “sabotage,” defended the Iran war as doing “the tough, right thing,” and noted that there have been many more U.S. military fatalities in previous wars.
“The proper remedy for a policy disagreement: It’s legislation. It’s debate. It’s the next presidential election,” Hegseth said. Using his own preferred title, he added: “It’s not handing the House and Senate floor to the Democrats so that they can run a show trial against the president and the secretary of war while Republicans still control Congress.”
Tuesday’s news conference was Hegseth’s first at the Pentagon in six months despite ongoing military operations in the Middle East, where more than 50,000 service members and three aircraft carrier groups are deployed in support of the stalemated Iran war. Articles of impeachment were filed against him Monday by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky), an anti-war lawmaker who has repeatedly clashed with Trump and Hegseth, and will soon leave office after losing his primary earlier this year.
Trump has defended Hegseth, saying in a social media post Monday night that the impeachment process is an effort to remove “perhaps the most popular and successful military official in the Country.”
“Pete Hegseth should be praised, not Impeached,” Trump posted. “Congress, stand up for Pete!!!”
Shortly after the news conference, Trump posted again, saying Hegseth “gets an ‘A’ PLUS, PLUS, PLUS for his defense against a disgruntled, angry, defeated, former Congressman, Thomas Massie, a TOTAL LOSER!”
Massie said in his own post shortly before Hegseth’s news conference that he expects the House will begin voting on his resolution later Tuesday. The first vote, he said, will be on a procedural motion to stop the resolution by referring it to committee. “If we can overcome that effort, we will proceed to a real debate and vote on the Articles of Impeachment,” Massie wrote. It was not immediately clear when a final vote on the impeachment effort could occur.
Under the impeachment resolution introduced Monday, Hegseth is accused of violating the War Powers Act by starting a war in Iran without the consent of Congress, overseeing the extrajudicial killings of suspected drug traffickers in Latin America and several other charges.
At the Pentagon, Hegseth appeared alone, taking questions only from conservative news media and condemning mainstream media reporting about the war. As journalists awaited his arrival, his security staff, in an unusual move, threatened to physically remove anyone who acted unprofessionally.
As he spoke, the secretary sought to link the impeachment against him the two earlier efforts targeting Trump, noting that both had “failed” and that this time Democrats are coming after him.
“If standing with President Trump puts me in that company, I’ll take that company every day of the week,” Hegseth said. The impeachment effort, he said, “tells our enemies, Iran, the cartels, every adversary watching, that the United States will actually punish its own warriors and its own civilian leadership for successfully executing lawful military operations.”
Hegseth also aligned himself to rank-and-file U.S. troops, saying that “politicians in Washington” have accused service members of “war crimes” in the Trump administration’s campaign of airstrikes against alleged drug traffickers at sea. The legality of such strikes has been questioned by some lawmakers and law of war experts, and claims have emerged that some of those killed were not drug runners but fishermen.
“If they want to come for the warriors,” Hegseth said, “they’re going to have to come through me.”
Despite Hegseth and Trump’s declarations, maintaining White House support was not seen as guaranteed. Two former Trump administration officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said the president may be willing to let the process play out and not spend much political capital defending Hegseth.
Hegseth has served as a top salesman for the Iran war, which the Trump administration and Israel initiated in February. But those close to the Trump administration have questioned whether the president instead might dismiss Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, or Adm. Brad Cooper, who has overseen the war as the head of U.S. Central Command.
As The Washington Post reported previously, all three men, at times, have failed to ensure that Trump clearly understood the war’s risks or its impact on the U.S. military’s arsenal of critical and hard-to-replace interceptors.
Hegseth’s staff has circulated talking points to allies hoping to shore up the GOP’s defense of their boss by highlighting his perceived accomplishments in office and attacking the effort to impeach him as a “charade.” His remarks on Tuesday largely hewed to that document, a copy of which has obtained by The Post.
Last week, the Pentagon and White House launched a coordinated campaign to publicly portray a united front behind Hegseth, with images of the secretary alongside Trump and newly appointed White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller.
Hegseth praised Miller on Tuesday, saying he’ll “be a fantastic chief of staff” to Trump and “understands the president’s agenda.”
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