House Republicans quash effort to impeach Defense Secretary Hegseth

Then the exoneration of a great American patriot, says Donald Trump, has Republicans blocked an effort by one of their own to impeach the Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. In the end, the chamber voting 211 to 204 in favor of a motion to refer that impeachment to the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee. Now, that is a move that the sponsor of the impeachment push, Thomas Massie, had warned would kill it. So, for now, Hegseth off the hook. But that, of course, could. Could all change when Democrats take control in the new year? Well, first of all, let's hear the reaction from Pete Hegseth himself. Proper remedy for a policy disagreement, it's legislation, it's debate, it's the next presidential election. It's not handing the House and Senate floor to the Democrats so they can run a show trial against the president and the secretary of war, while Republicans still control Congress and should be delivering wins for the American people. Well, let's talk then to Rochelle Ferguson-Biahi from International Affairs Desk, who joins me here on set. So, Rochelle, the impeachment bid against Hegseth failing, much of a surprise? Well, that's right. It failed. It doesn't come as a huge surprise. As you mentioned there, Stuart, this majority then of the House of Representatives agreeing that ultimately, rather than there being a direct vote on whether Pete Hegseth should have been impeached or not, they were going to push it aside, essentially shelve it, some people have called it, and let a Republican-led Judiciary Committee deal with this. Now, I think the things to take away from this are not so much the element of surprise, because Massey himself said he didn't expect it to go through. The first time what he expected it to do was to ultimately give Donald Trump an idea that perhaps it was time to get rid of Hegseth. So, you know, we've spoken about him at this dissident Republican. Let's let's call him over the last little while. He's become quite a staunch critic of Trump. He was the one who has introduced this resolution, eight articles in total calling for the impeachment of Pete Hegseth. He was the only Republican to ...posed sending it to this Senate-led committee. Essentially, for this to have made any real waves, it would have had to have the voice of several other Republicans behind it. They would have had to want to defy Donald Trump, and that's not always the case. He can be a scary character to defy, as many people have found out. And if we bring that up for you just one last time. absence of Democrats. There were at least 11 Democrats. There would have needed eight of them to change the path of that vote. Now, among the missing in action Democrats, you might say there was Nancy Pelosi. She was receiving a lifetime award. There was Haley Stevens. Remember, she created dissent in her party when she voted kind of in favor of Mike Rogers as opposed to Abdullah Syed. A number of Democrats are saying, you know, we were stuck in traffic. We just I just couldn't get there. That could. Could have swung the vote, but of course it wasn't to be this time. So this idea was an intention by Massey to find Hegseth guilty of misconduct and ultimately remove him from office. I mean, he has survived for now. I suppose the next question is just for how long has he survived? Well, yeah, I mean, it's a good question. I think it's a pertinent one. There are a number of Republican lawmakers who may not have taken part in that vote to, you know, impeach him, but also are saying, well, you know, what is going to happen going forward? Ted Cruz, for example, says he feels that Trump will either fire him or Hegseth will, you know, step down of his own accord. He's a Republican. He's a high profile Republican. And so I think we may begin to hear more voices from from the Republicans calling for Hegseth either to be impeached or to be removed from office. You said it earlier, Stuart, any reprieve could be short-lived. Why? Because by Shelving this doesn't mean that it's the end of it. It means that we may have to wait now until Democrats come into power on the 1st of January. They then could decide to impeach Donald Trump or Hegseth. All that remains to be seen. I think one thing that's interesting for our viewers is the idea of impeachment and getting somebody to leave office. They're not the same things. You have the kind of administrative formality, which is setting out these articles, this resolution for impeachment. If that works, that's fine. But actually removing somebody from office is a far more detailed You know, endeavour. You need ultimately a vote by the Senate and you need to have a super majority within the Senate for that to go forward. So he would have to be Pete Hegseth, you know, convicted before the Senate. You would need 67 senators out of 100, something that Democrats don't currently have. So no impeachment for now, but essentially removing him totally from office could be a real big feat. So where we are at the moment then, what reactions have there been to all of this? Well, we mentioned those earlier. We had quite a fiery press conference from Hegseth calling this, you know, sabotage, saying that, you know, this was essentially something that was a complete farce for him. He's also accused Massey of endangering national security rather than protecting what he calls... patriotic warriors. They're in fact endangering the country and making outsiders see that there's no kind of unity within the country. Then up on your screens now was that, you know, tweet from the Truth Social of Donald Trump where he called Massey a major loser. You know, he said that Republicans, everyone except him, was behind that. He also makes the comment that the American military has the best recruitment numbers in history. Caveat there, they have Certainly seen an uptick in recruitment figures, the best figures for the last 15 years, not in American history. But, of course, Trump seeing this as a win, you know, his man is still very much firmly in his position as defence secretary. Rochelle, thanks so much. Rochelle Ferguson, Biyahi there from our international affairs desk.