Hegseth’s ‘fight, fight, fight’ video pours fuel on impeachment flames

In seeking to fend off impeachment, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth may have strengthened his critics’ case for it.

In an ardent social media video Thursday, Hegseth vowed, “We Stand, We Fight” amid rising speculation he may become a scapegoat for the Republican disaster in midterm elections shaped by the unpopular Iran war.

President Donald Trump told reporters that the former Fox News anchor was doing a “fantastic job” at the Pentagon, even as expectations rose that the lame-duck GOP-led House of Representatives may vote to impeach the secretary next week.

Apart from Trump, few in Washington are willing to publicly defend Hegseth, especially after an electoral rout which showed the public’s disdain for a war the defense secretary has enthusiastically waged. So Hegseth took matters into his own hands with a video seemingly aimed at a single viewer: Trump.

The defense secretary tapped into Trump’s anger at his own impeachments in his first term, apparently positioning himself as a fellow victim of what the president sees as political chicanery. “It’s all about the politics of personal destruction. Didn’t work against President Trump, and it won’t work with me. You can rest assured of that,” Hegseth said.

The video was released at a volatile political moment with Washington rocked by the midterms results and as Trump’s inner circle splits over the war. It followed a another stunning social media post in which Vice President JD Vance pinned the GOP debacle Tuesday on the war and warned that those who supported it had lost the Senate for six years.

Turmoil in the administration underscored a wider point: It’s now clear that Trump lost the political front of the Iran war, whatever the strategic and military score. The Islamic Republic’s endurance after the initial US and Israeli onslaught inflicted a huge political cost on Trump, which was transmitted through soaring gasoline prices.

The result is that a president who broke his promise to avoid foreign wars will now spend the last two years of his term penned in by bumper Democratic majorities in Congress. Since the president isn’t going anywhere, political logic suggests that another high-profile figure may carry the can.

But Trump told reporters that he was not considering firing Hegseth, praising him for the US raid in Venezuela to extract then-dictator Nicolás Maduro earlier this year and for his Iran war leadership.

Still, Hegseth seems increasingly in danger of emulating Donald Rumsfeld, the defense secretary cut loose 20 years ago after voters dealt a huge midterm election defeat to Republicans because they wanted to punish another president, George W. Bush, for another unpopular war, in Iraq.

Trump can barely afford uncertainty over the Pentagon’s leadership since he’s facing an urgent dilemma over what to do next in the Iran war. There was growing speculation before the election that he’d escalate the conflict once votes were counted to try to force Tehran to negotiate or capitulate.

Doing so now would leave him isolated after the public abandoned him over the war and as schisms widen in his Cabinet. But backing away would force Trump to admit an embarrassing defeat, since Tehran is defying the US victory he craves.

Reaching Trump through a medium he loves

Hegseth, a TV veteran, knows which buttons to push with his boss. His video was fiery, loaded with the kinds of lacerating cultural attacks that endeared him to Trump in the first place. He boasted about driving “the weird and the woke” out of the military. He also adopted the iconography of the assassination attempt that Trump survived in Butler, Pennsylvania, in 2024, presenting himself as the epitome of the toughness the president’s supporters perceive in their idol.

“He literally took a bullet for this nation,” Hegseth said. “He shook his fist and said ‘fight, fight, fight,’ and so will we.”

Hegseth’s speech was accompanied by a blitz of supportive social media posts by aides in what increasingly looks like an orchestrated campaign to save his job. The message to Trump and the MAGA movement is clear — if Hegseth walks the plank, it will mean an enormous defeat for the president. A senior administration official told CNN’s Haley Britzky on Thursday that “the Pentagon and White House made their positions crystal clear tonight. They are coming out swinging in support of Hegseth and that should tell you everything you need to know.”

It is not the first time the MAGA movement has mobilized for Hegseth. An aggressive pushback when his confirmation push was in deep trouble last year succeeded in saving his nomination.

Yet Hegseth’s latest self-defense may have misjudged the political moment.

He delivered his amped-up speech from the Pentagon steps, with a sign reading “Department of War” over his shoulder — a jarring choice two days after millions of Americans voted to repudiate the nation’s latest foreign entanglement. Such bombast may have worked earlier, at the apex of Trump’s power. Now it seems tin-eared.

After Vance’s break with Trump, it also hints at a leadership vacuum, especially since the commander in chief has spent hours following the election on his personal vanity projects, including the White House ballroom. On Thursday, Trump signed a proclamation designating the Cabinet Room and the Oval Office as national landmarks in an apparent effort to protect his gold-soaked redecorations.

Hegseth’s tactics complicate delicate defense spending push

The depth of Hegseth’s predicament will become clearer next week. Rep. Thomas Massie, an anti-Trump Republican who lost a primary to a challenger backed by the president, is vowing to bring up articles of impeachment.

Republican criticism of Hegseth on Capitol Hill may reach a crescendo when angry GOP lawmakers return to Washington after the electoral rout. What incentive will there be for defeated representatives or survivors who now face life in the minority to stand up for the architect of a war that doomed their careers?

There is no sign yet that there would be a two-thirds majority to convict Hegseth in an impeachment trial in the Senate and remove him from office. But even before this week’s elections, Hegseth’s brash appearances at hearings made him few friends on Capitol Hill. Lawmakers also accuse him of withholding details of Iran war strategy and Iranian attacks on US bases in the Middle East. A wide majority vote for impeachment in the House may make his position politically untenable.

Democratic House Minority leader Hakeem Jeffries on Thursday asked on social media, “Why is Pete Hegseth still around?” Last week, this would have been easy to put down to partisan sniping. But Jeffries now speaks as a future speaker of the House. Administration funding requests from next January will run through a Democratic Congress, and the Pentagon will need to play nice with the new majority party.

Even before then, Hegseth may be an impediment to the passage of the administration’s $1.5 trillion defense budget.

“I don’t think he has invested enough in the US Senate or Congress to even get a funding request done,” outgoing North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Wednesday.

“This is beyond the Iran war; this about trying to provide the funding stream that the DOD needs to move forward,” Tillis said, adding that chairs and ranking members of key committees view the defense secretary as disengaged. “Hegseth is just not the right guy for the job,” he said.

Democrats seem to view the wobbling Hegseth as a chance to wound Trump even before they claim their majorities in the new year.

Democratic Sen. Ruben Gallego told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Thursday that Hegseth’s video further undermined his authority. “You’re conducting a war right now, and then you’re reacting as if you’re on Fox News,” he said.

The Arizona senator added: “It’s ridiculous. … If he wanted to make a good argument for him not to be impeached, he literally just doubled down and asked for an impeachment.”