Defiant Hegseth calls impeachment push a farce as House prepares vote and Trump gives him an A-plus

United States Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has blasted the effort to impeach him as a farce that would embolden America's adversaries, striking a defiant tone at his first Pentagon news briefing in six months as the House of Representatives prepared a procedural vote on the articles against him.

Hegseth thanked President Donald Trump for his continued support and lashed out at his political opponents in Congress and the media in an unapologetic defence of his record. He said past impeachments of Trump had ultimately failed, and dismissed the charges as the work of "politically motivated people" trying to punish him for carrying out the president's policies.

The impeachment drive comes from an unlikely source: Representative Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, who introduced eight articles of impeachment against Hegseth on Monday. Massie, who is leaving Congress at the end of his term in January after losing his primary to a Trump-backed opponent, first filed the articles in September and reintroduced them on 9 November after House Speaker Mike Johnson adjourned the chamber before a vote could take place.

The House scheduled a procedural vote for late Tuesday that will test support for the impeachment effort. Congressional sources say the resolution may have the votes to pass even with Trump's Republicans still controlling the House until Democrats take over on 3 January, although conviction appears unlikely in the Senate, where a two-thirds majority is required and Republicans hold 53 of 100 seats.

The charges cover four broad areas: the war in Iran, military operations in Venezuela, strikes against alleged drug-smuggling boats in Latin America, and Hegseth's alleged retaliation against a Democratic senator. At their core is the accusation that Hegseth issued orders to go to war with Iran without an imminent threat or the approval of Congress, in violation of the 1973 War Powers Resolution, along with allegations of civilian casualties and unlawful killings in the boat strikes.

Trump has thrown his weight firmly behind his defence secretary. "Pete Hegseth gets an 'A' PLUS, PLUS, PLUS for his defense against a disgruntled, angry, defeated, former Congressman, Thomas Massie, a TOTAL LOSER," the president wrote on his Truth Social platform just after the Pentagon briefing ended, praising the news conference as "a great job" and "a MUST SEE". Speaking to C-SPAN, Trump said he would be "disappointed" if Republicans voted in favour of removing Hegseth, and defended his record by claiming he had "won two wars, Venezuela in 48 hours" and in Iran, where he said the military had "wiped out their leaders, their navies" and knocked out the nuclear programme with B-2 bombers.

Massie's move comes on the heels of the Republican Party's midterm defeat, which prompted some Republican lawmakers to call for Hegseth's removal. Hegseth has made himself the face of the ongoing conflict in Iran, vigorously defending the decision to go to war, including in a video address filmed outside the Pentagon, and his critics say the war, which remains deeply unpopular, has become a political liability for the administration.

Democratic support for the impeachment initiative has also gathered momentum. House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, who is projected to become Speaker when Democrats take control of the House in January 2027, said he would vote in favour of impeaching Hegseth, and if the articles are still pending when the new Congress sits, Democrats will be able to take up the matter themselves.

For now, Hegseth's fate rests with his own party. If the procedural vote fails, the effort dies for this session; if it passes, the House will be forced to confront the articles directly, and every Republican will have to choose, on the record, between the president's defence secretary and a fellow Republican's claim that he broke the law. Either way, the briefing on Tuesday made one thing clear: Hegseth has no intention of going quietly.

Whether the impeachment effort succeeds or fails, it has already exposed the fractures inside the Republican Party after the midterms, and the tension between a president who prizes loyalty above all and a Congress that is beginning to ask whether that loyalty has gone too far.