How the Hegseth Impeachment Almost Came Together—and Then Fell Completely Apart

Politics How Pete Hegseth Escaped Republicans stuck by Trump’s guy. Democrats failed an attendance test. And the impeachment vote fell short. Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images, Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images, Win McNamee/Getty Images, Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images, and Getty Images Plus. Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. On Monday afternoon, Kentucky GOP Rep. Thomas Massie seemed like he could almost taste it. He had just filed his impeachment articles against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for a second time. The first time, in September, had prompted Republican leaders to send members home until after the election. This time, he would be able to force a vote on it within the next two days. He argued to reporters that the timing felt for success felt right: All Democrats were on board, and dozens of House Republicans who’d just lost their races had nothing to lose. Massie mocked news that Hegseth was planning to address the press to stave off the impeachment, telling reporters that he hoped Hegseth would address “the eight articles, and doesn’t get up and misquote the Bible in Quentin Tarantino fashion and do some pull-ups and call everybody fat and gay for being for this impeachment.” When a reporter asked if any other Republicans had committed to him that they would vote for this, though, his answer was simple: “No.” “A lot of them tell me they don’t like Hegseth,” he added after a pause, before moving on to the next question. That dislike was worth exactly zero Republican votes late Tuesday afternoon. By a 211 to 204 vote, the House voted to refer the impeachment to committee—i.e., to kill it—with Massie remaining the lone Republican opponent. He joined all voting Democrats in that position, though 11 Democrats did not cast a vote. (Those 11 Democrats are likely to get an earful in the coming days.) These were not the vibes heading into the week as this vote loomed. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz described Hegseth’s impeachment this week as “extremely likely” unless the secretary resigned first. House Republican leaders were acknowledging that they might lose, relying on the Senate to either dismiss the charges before a trial or at the conclusion of it. Senate Republicans were prepared to receive the articles, with several retiring senators—Thom Tillis, Joni Ernst, Bill Cassidy—even speculating that they were eager to entertain them. House Republicans were nervous about their attendance given the high levels of senioritis on their side, and the many members who blamed their loss on the Iran War that Hegseth has managed. In the end, though, only 7 Republicans missed the impeachment vote—fewer absences than the Democrats had, even though angry, despondent Republicans had good reason to let it all burn down. Why couldn’t Massie lure any of his own to the dark side? The problems may have been Massie, himself, as well as the articles that he wrote. Massie is a longtime irritant of his fellow House Republican members, as well as the president. A quirky libertarian, Massie was defeated by a Trump-backed primary challenger earlier this year after repeatedly casting votes against his party on issues ranging from spending to foreign policy to the release of the Epstein files. He’s not indicative of where other House Republicans are. That showed in his impeachment resolution. What were his eight articles? Several were about how Hegseth has violated the War Powers Resolution. Others charged Hegseth with ignoring laws that minimize civilian casualties, authorizing extrajudicial killings against alleged drug smuggler, using DOD to retaliate against a sitting senator (Sen. Mark Kelly) for free speech, illegally capturing Venezuelan foreign leader Nicolás Maduro, and waging unauthorized war in Yemen. Why, you might be asking, isn’t Massie directing these charges towards the guy who signs off on them—President Donald Trump? “I think the president needs to see—this is a metaphor—one of his horses shot out from under him, and then maybe he will see things differently,” Massie told reporters Monday. “I think politically, it’s an impossible hurdle, but also I think this is the better target. Sometimes you apply the ordnance where the best target is, and the best target is Pete Hegseth.” Hegseth may have been the ripest political target for impeachment. But these articles weren’t written to maximize votes. Most Republicans have issues with Hegseth—his management of the Pentagon, his demotion of generals, whether he’s been accurately relaying information about the war to the president, his apparent discovery of the importance of the Strait of Hormuz only after hostilities began. They don’t have a problem with what Hegseth has done in Venezuela, or Yemen, or to people in the Caribbean, or his creative interpretations of the War Powers Resolution of 1973. Most of them support most of that. And even though many don’t like that they lost their elections over high gas and other input prices sparked by the Iran War, they’re not outright opposed to confronting Iran. Massie wasn’t merely asking them to impeach Hegseth, he was asking them to reject the foreign policy of Trump’s first two years. They weren’t about to take that leap on either the policy or the politics. Even retiring members. “I’m not a fan of the secretary,” retiring Nebraska Rep. Don Bacon, a moderate, internationalist Republican told reporters Tuesday. “But if you read the impeachment—and it’s written by Mr. Massie, who’s anti-Iran, anti-Ukraine, anti-Israel—I just don’t really align with the impeachment itself. But, surely, if you had put in about firing 80 generals and not spending appropriated money, I’d feel a little differently about it.” Hegseth had put his own work into saving his hide. At a Pentagon press conference Tuesday morning, the first such occasion in six months, Hegseth gave a speech defending his record and castigating Massie. That defense was directed less towards House Republicans, themselves, than towards the audience of one in the White House. The most telling moment in Hegseth’s prepared remarks, as he described how “we’ve seen this show before,” was when he noted that “they” had “impeached President Trump over a perfect phone call.” That’s Trump’s specific phrasing for the 2019 call in which he pressured newly elected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to dig up dirt on the Bidens in exchange for military assistance, which led to Trump’s first impeachment. Hegseth then observed that “they impeached him again in his final week in office” (reason omitted.) “Now, they’re trying a third time, this time against a member of his cabinet,” he continued. “They will fail again, and if standing with President Trump puts me in that company, I’ll take that company every day of the week.” The speech went on much like this—Trump’s great, the military is doing great because of Trump, and Trump’s great—and earned its desired review in a Trump post: “Pete Hegseth gets an ‘A’ PLUS, PLUS, PLUS for his defense against a disgruntled, angry, defeated, former Congressman, Thomas Massie, a TOTAL LOSER!” In other words, Trump gave the signal: He would stick by his man, for now, and Republicans had better too. If this was a test of Trump’s strength with House Republicans, even after his presidency had just brought them to their lowest point in decades, this impeachment effort didn’t put up much of a fight.