First posted on Instagram
Michigan Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed looked straight into the camera on CNN on Tuesday night and told Secretary of War Pete Hegseth to resign, saying Hegseth is failing at his job and has mishandled the war in Iran — and arguing that the cost of that war is being felt by ordinary Americans at the gas pump and the grocery store.
“Can you imagine being Pete Hegseth right now? Why are you still in your job?” El-Sayed said on CNN’s The Source with Kaitlan Collins. “You are really bad at this. You are failing your responsibility. You have mishandled this war, and nobody really actually understands what it is you’re about.” Then, addressing Hegseth directly, he added: “So, just resign. Make it easy for everybody instead of, in the end, getting taken out because that is clearly what’s happening. So, Pete, just take it from me, you’re not good at this.”
El-Sayed tied the war directly to the cost of living in Michigan. “Everywhere I went in Michigan, the big questions were, why does it cost me 80 dollars to fill up my truck? And why can’t I afford a second pound of ground beef at the grocery store?” he said. “And that goes back to one issue, which is this insane war that we have no business fighting.” He called the war “illegal, immoral, and unethical.”
He set out what he said Democrats must address first: “the nuclear bomb that is about to go off in our health care system” and reversing the Medicaid cuts that he said are about to go through, ending the war in Iran, and “finally, the tariffs that we’re all paying huge amounts of money for that make no actual economic sense.” The Instagram post presenting the interview names Hegseth and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the officials El-Sayed accuses of failing struggling Americans, and warns that political investigations mean nothing if people’s lives are not improving.
El-Sayed spoke hours after the House voted 211-204 on Tuesday to send to committee a resolution to impeach Hegseth, effectively killing the bid. The resolution was brought by Representative Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, over Hegseth’s conduct in office and his handling of the war in Iran. President Donald Trump defended Hegseth after the vote, writing on Truth Social that the attempt to impeach him had “miserably FAILED.” Hegseth dismissed the impeachment effort at a Pentagon news conference earlier on Tuesday. El-Sayed said he would assess any impeachment on its own merits, but added: “It’s really quite clear that Pete Hegseth is failing his responsibilities as Secretary of Defense.”
El-Sayed defeated Republican Mike Rogers in Michigan’s Senate race on November 3, becoming the first Muslim elected to the United States Senate. He takes office on January 3, 2027, succeeding retiring Democratic Senator Gary Peters. In the same CNN interview, he said he was the first in his party to publicly call for Senator Chris Van Hollen to lead Senate Democrats.
Massie, who brought the impeachment articles, has predicted Hegseth will be out of his job before the end of the year. Trump has said he stands by his defense secretary.