Vance denounces Hegseth impeachment push: ‘This isn’t about Iran’

Vice President Vance on Tuesday condemned the impeachment push against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, saying lawmakers are actually mad at Hegseth for taking on Pentagon bureaucracy, not the Iran war.

“Has Pete Hegseth committed impeachable crimes? The question is absurd and the answer is: obviously not,” Vance wrote on the social media platform X .

Vance wrote that Congress is using impeachment rather than “actual policymaking.”

“Congress has so many tools for registering its policy disagreements. Rather than use them, they’re going to try to impeach Pete Hegseth,” he wrote.

“They did the same to Donald Trump. Legislation is hard. Impeachments are easy (and ultimately, inconsequential),” he continued. “The irony is that legislators are most angry at Pete on the issues where he’s most correct: repositioning forces away from Europe/Ukraine and reorganizing the general officer corps.”

“This isn’t about Iran, this is about the fact that Pete took on the bureaucracy at the Pentagon,” he added.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) escalated his effort to impeach Hegseth by forcing a House vote later this week. It’s unclear whether the measure will have enough votes to pass while Republicans still control the House.

The eight impeachment articles against Hegseth accuse him of abusing his powers for several Pentagon operations, including the Iran war, the capture of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and the extrajudicial killings of alleged drug smugglers in international waters.

This all comes after the Republicans faced massive losses in the midterm elections last Tuesday. The results have been interpreted as a repudiation of Trump and his policies, including the Iran war, which Hegseth played a part in.

Vance’s defense of Hegseth, along with him saying the impeachment push has nothing to do with the Iran war, comes after the vice president himself placed the blame for the GOP’s election night losses on the Iran war.

“The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night,” Vance said in a lengthy post on X.

President Trump, for his part, has given Hegseth an A+ grade for his work.

“Pete Hegseth gets an ‘A’ PLUS, PLUS, PLUS for his defense against a disgruntled, angry, defeated, former Congressman, Thomas Massie, a TOTAL LOSER,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Tuesday.

But The Hill has previously reported that Trump has privately asked allies about Hegseth’s standing.

Still, Trump’s recent appointment of longtime ally Stephen Miller as his new chief of staff might help Hegseth’s case. A senior administration official told NewsNation that Miller has Hegseth’s back.