Republicans Turn on Hegseth After Rout

What Happened

The knives are out, and they are pointed squarely at Pete Hegseth. A day after a midterm wipeout handed Democrats both chambers of Congress, Republican lawmakers and allies are rushing to pin the disaster on the defense secretary, CNN reports, arguing behind closed doors that he helped convince President Donald Trump to attack Iran with no exit strategy and no plan for the political fallout.

The anger is raw. Hegseth oversold how quickly and easily the United States could win, multiple Republicans told CNN on condition of anonymity, and kept pushing for escalation even as the bombing brought Iran no closer to surrender. “If the president is serious about anyone taking responsibility for it, it’s Pete Hegseth,” one Republican close to the White House told the network. “Pete has been either dishonest or incorrect — neither of which are acceptable — about timelines, goals and objectives since the beginning.”

Vice President JD Vance poured fuel on the fire Wednesday, saying flatly that “the reason we lost is the war,” though he did not blame anyone by name.

Now the House could vote on impeachment as soon as next week. Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky told CNN he will trigger the vote when Congress returns, and multiple GOP sources told the network they expect it to pass. Massie filed eight articles of impeachment in September. According to Roll Call, they accuse Hegseth of violating the 1973 War Powers Resolution in the Iran war, acting illegally in military campaigns in Venezuela, Yemen, the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific, disregarding the protection of civilians in wartime, and suppressing the free speech of a US senator.

Massie is not mincing words. “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 pressure is building in the Senate too. Sen. Thom Tillis told CBS News on election night that Hegseth has “a reckoning” coming, warning that his strained ties with lawmakers are undercutting the administration’s push for a $1.5 trillion defense spending package, The Guardian reported. Tillis has called his vote to confirm Hegseth the “biggest regret of my career,” Al Jazeera noted.