Pete Hegseth Fires Back as Rep. Thomas Massie Moves to Force an Impeachment Vote — "If You Want to Take Issue With What We Did in Epic Fury or Rough Rider or Nabbing Nicolas Maduro, You're Taking Issue With the Troops" — and Announces His First Press Conference in Over 180 Days
Monday, November 9, 2026
Pete Hegseth is not waiting quietly for the impeachment vote — he is taking the fight to the cameras. Facing the expected resolution in Congress, the Defense Secretary told reporters on Monday that he is eager to litigate the policy choices he and President Trump made in Iran and Venezuela: "If you want to take issue with what we did in Epic Fury or Rough Rider or nabbing Nicolás Maduro, you're taking issue with the troops and what they accomplished, which is historic." And he announced he will hold a press conference on Tuesday — his first in over 180 days — devoted to the looming impeachment threat.
Hegseth defended the decision to strike Iran head-on. Starting the war was a "bold move" by Trump, he said, "and as the president points out so clearly — you can't let crazy Islamists have a nuclear bomb." "The choice was don't act and wish it away or take a bold move, which the president did with Midnight Hammer, which we've done with Epic Fury," he said — Midnight Hammer being the strike on Iran's nuclear facilities, and Epic Fury the larger war that followed. Rep. Thomas Massie has pushed the impeachment resolution forward over the objections of House GOP leadership, as momentum grows among Republicans who blame the Iran war for the party's midterm wipeout.
The other side's numbers are in the open too, and the piece states them plainly: the AP Voter Poll, a survey of more than 100,000 voters, found about 6 in 10 said the U.S. made the "wrong decision" taking military action against Iran — though only about a third called the war "crucial" to how they voted, well below the roughly half who said that about the cost of living or government corruption. What this means: Tuesday's press conference is where Hegseth makes his case to the country before the House makes its own — that the operations were historic accomplishments by the troops who carried them out, and that impeaching the man who ran them means taking issue with them. The vote will test whether Congress judges the war by its results or by its politics.
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