The Other 98%
Thomas Massie is forcing a vote to impeach Pete Hegseth next week, and Republicans are ready to let him burn.
One of Trump’s own officials told CNN that Hegseth “probably knows he’s dead.”
Two days after getting crushed at the polls, Republicans are already throwing their self-styled Secretary of War under the bus.
Massie has nothing left to lose, and it shows. Trump spent months trying to get rid of him, and in May it worked. Trump’s handpicked challenger beat him in the most expensive House primary in American history. Massie leaves Congress in January.
He’s using his last weeks there to go after Trump’s favorite Cabinet member. On Wednesday night, he gave Hegseth a choice: resign or be impeached. Multiple GOP sources told CNN they expect impeachment to pass.
Massie also isn’t letting his party pretend one war did all the damage. “You don’t screw up this badly an election with just one issue,” he told CNN.
“It was completely avoidable if they’d just broken out of the cultish following of Donald Trump.”
The rest of the GOP is too busy sharpening knives to listen. One Republican close to the White House went straight for Hegseth’s throat.
“If the president is serious about anyone taking responsibility for it, it’s Pete Hegseth. Pete has been either dishonest or incorrect, neither of which are acceptable, about timelines, goals and objectives since the beginning.”
JD Vance didn’t even try to spin it. “The reason we lost is the war.”
The same Trump official also told CNN that the day before the election, Trump was telling Hegseth, “You’re my best guy. You’re the best guy I have.” Now the official says Hegseth wants “an exit sufficiently dramatic that it gives him a launching pad to run for POTUS.” Somebody should tell him how Tuesday went.
Hegseth should have been impeached the day he posted strike plans in a Signal chat that included a journalist. Since then, he’s purged a long list of generals and admirals, Adm. Nancy Lacore among them.
He ordered the boat strikes that have killed more than 200 people in the Caribbean and the Pacific. And he helped drag the country into a war with Iran during which 23 American service members have died and 865 have been wounded, according to the Pentagon’s latest count.
None of that bothered House Republicans until it cost them the House.
The Pentagon swears Hegseth is “100% committed to leading the Department until the end of President Trump’s term in office.” He might want to brush up on the history of his new title.
The last Secretary of War the House impeached was William Belknap, in 1876. He resigned that morning to dodge impeachment, and the House impeached him anyway.
