Foreign outlets and retired generals are openly campaigning to remove Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth after he survived an impeachment vote this week — and ordinary Americans should ask who's really threatened by an America-first Pentagon.
The House voted 211-204 on Tuesday to shelve eight articles of impeachment introduced by outgoing Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., sending them to the Judiciary Committee and effectively killing the effort. All Republicans except Massie voted to table. Eleven Democrats were absent — some reportedly claimed they were "caught in traffic." But the forces trying to oust Hegseth aren't waiting for the next Congress.
The Guardian, a British publication, published what amounts to a press release for his removal, quoting a parade of retired military brass and former Pentagon officials predicting his downfall. Randy Manner, a retired National Guard major general and member of National Security Leaders for America, told The Guardian: "I give it 100% probability he'll be the first secretary of defense to be impeached." Joe Cirincione, a former House Armed Services Committee aide, called Hegseth "the worst secretary of defense in American history. Nobody else comes close." Kevin Carroll, a former Army intelligence officer who served under Donald Rumsfeld — the man who helped sell the Iraq War — predicted Republican senators would vote to convict.
These aren't dispassionate observers. They are career national security apparatchiks who built the interventionist consensus Hegseth was appointed to dismantle. NSL4A, the group Manner represents, is part of the think-tank-and-former-brass ecosystem that backed every open-ended commitment of the last twenty years. A British newspaper cheering them on is no accident — NATO allies and the broader coalition that profited from American intervention have every reason to want a secretary who questions those commitments gone.
Massie's articles charged Hegseth with launching a war against Iran in violation of the Constitution, conducting deadly strikes against alleged drug traffickers off South America, seizing former Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, and attempting retribution against Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly for urging service members to disobey illegal orders. Hegseth pushed back hard, posting a video on X calling the impeachment a "sham" and accusing Massie of "sabotage" toward the U.S. military. "Put the secretary on trial today, and the men and women who carried out those orders tomorrow," Hegseth said at a Pentagon press conference — his first in six months.
President Trump stood by his secretary. "The Democrats' attempt to impeach Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has miserably failed!" he wrote on Truth Social, touting "victories in Venezuela and Iran" and "the best recruitment numbers in the history of the military."
The Deseret News noted the surreal theater of the week, including an unusual Pentagon security warning to reporters before Hegseth's briefing that they would be "physically removed" if they didn't maintain "decorum" — though no specifics on what that meant were provided and no journalists were ejected. The Guardian, meanwhile, led with a cemetery reprimand — Hegseth's party was scolded for talking and laughing at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier — as though a protocol violation at Arlington outweighs the constitutional questions around wars in Iran and Venezuela.
The incoming Democratic House majority, with Hakeem Jeffries vowing to "run Pete Hegseth out of town," will revive this fight. Democrats are projected to hold a maximum of 56 Senate seats — far short of the two-thirds needed for conviction. But the permanent Washington class doesn't need a Senate vote to hamstring a secretary. They need enough leaks, enough retired generals on cable news, and enough foreign newspapers amplifying the narrative.
The question for Americans is simple: Do you want your defense secretary answering to voters, or to the same coalition that gave you Iraq, Afghanistan, and twenty years of blank checks?
