Pete Hegseth took the podium at the Pentagon on Tuesday for his first press briefing since May and went straight at the impeachment articles Rep. Thomas Massie filed against him on Monday, calling them “a political spectacle, a personal manifesto driven by ego and resentment” and an act of sabotage against the president, the country and the troops.
“It’s a political spectacle, a personal manifesto driven by ego and resentment. Time for one man’s final days in Congress to try to do damage to this president, this country, and most irresponsibly, the warriors who defend it,” Hegseth said. “What one disgruntled and defeated congressman is attempting is not oversight, and it’s not accountability.”
He said the push to remove him sends a dangerous signal to the force: “It tells them that a single rogue legislator, loaded with personal animus for the president, can attempt to veto national security decisions made by the duly elected commander-in-chief. It puts a target on the backs of American warriors by signaling that Congress will undermine their missions in real time.” Throughout the briefing he repeated that Massie’s resolution is a policy disagreement that belongs in legislation and debate, not an impeachment.
On the operations the articles target, Hegseth was blunt: “As for the articles themselves, Iran, the cartels, Maduro, Yemen, everyone was a lawful operation ordered by the commander-in-chief, then ordered by myself, notified to Congress and executed by American warriors who did their jobs. We destroyed terror regimes’ capabilities. We sank the boats carrying poison into our communities. We put a narco dictator in handcuffs. These are not high crimes. This is the job, and it’s the job well done.”
He also pointed to history: no secretary of war or defense has ever been impeached for carrying out lawful military operations, and it has been 150 years since a defense secretary was impeached at all — William Belknap in 1876, who was acquitted by the Senate. “We’ve seen this show before. They impeached President Trump over a perfect phone call. They impeached him again in his final week in office. Both times they failed,” Hegseth said. “Now they’re trying a third time. This time against a member of his cabinet. They will fail again. And if standing with President Trump puts me in that company, I’ll take that company every day of the week.”
And he warned anyone coming after the troops who carried out the strikes: “If they want to come for the warriors, they’re going to have to come through me.”
Massie, a Kentucky Republican who is leaving Congress after losing his primary to a Trump-backed challenger, introduced the articles on Monday. Several of them accuse Hegseth of violating the War Powers Resolution, which requires congressional consultation on and oversight of U.S. military interventions. Speaking to reporters on Monday, Massie accused Hegseth of using “our troops to go seize oil for large corporations in America” and attacked the administration’s refusal to acknowledge the bombing of a school in Iran: “Obviously we hit it, and you can determine what kind of missiles from the range and the kind of destruction there was. I don’t think they’re going to get out of that article of impeachment by saying, ‘oh, we don’t know who bombed that school’ — although I think the president tried that for a day or two.” President Trump has defended Hegseth, saying his defense secretary “won two wars,” and called Massie “a stone cold loser” and “sick.”
Asked about Republicans, including Vice President JD Vance, blaming the party’s midterm losses on the Iran war and the spike in prices, Hegseth declined to point fingers: “I respect the vice-president greatly, and I’m certainly not going to exchange in any finger pointing. And thankfully, politics is not really my thing.” But he backed the president’s position — asked whether he would do it all over again, “Absolutely” — and echoed Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s line that the war, now in its eighth month, is “not necessarily popular, but it may have been necessary.” “That’s certainly how I feel. It was a necessary undertaking,” Hegseth added. He also turned on the press corps: “You hate the president more than you love our country, or our troops,” he told reporters.
Hegseth also laid out the full record of the operations themselves — an overwhelming list of success he made clear he would not apologise for. “I stand behind every one of these operations. I was proud to execute them, and I would do it again tomorrow,” he said. “By every measure, we achieved a historic military victory.”
On Operation Epic Fury, the campaign against Iran, he gave the numbers: “In under 40 days of sustained combat, more than 13,000 targets struck. Their navy sunk. Their air force destroyed. Their missile launchers devastated.” He said American forces had destroyed more than 80% of Iran’s nuclear industrial base, and pointed to Operation Midnight Hammer, the earlier B-2 strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites: “The largest and most successful B-2 strike in American history. Nuclear sites obliterated.” “The crazy Islamists in Tehran will never, ever have a nuclear weapon,” he said.
He said the naval blockade of Iranian ports still holds: “The ironclad blockade unbroken. We control the Strait of Hormuz.” And he warned Tehran directly: “And if that regime makes one wrong move, as the president said, we remain locked and loaded with the full weight and lethality of Central Command.”
He also honoured the cost. Eighteen American service members have died since the campaign began, though none were lost in the Venezuela mission: “Nobody was lost in the mission in Venezuela, but 18 Americans have given their lives in Operation Epic Fury. We know their names. I’ve been to Dover. We honor them every day, but their sacrifice only stiffens our resolve.” “We didn’t start this war. Iran did 47 years ago,” he said. “History will judge the Iran war quite differently. We did the right thing. We did the right thing at the right time.” President Trump has said the same of the campaign, telling the Wall Street Journal: “I did the right thing. I would have done it again.”
What this means for ordinary Americans: the operations at the heart of this fight were ordered to stop poison flowing into American communities and to break the regimes arming America’s enemies — and the man who ran them is telling Congress that second-guessing lawful orders in the middle of a war puts the troops carrying them out in danger. The House now has until Wednesday to take up Massie’s resolution: it can vote on the floor, send it to committee, or table it entirely, and a vote could come as soon as today.
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