Jeffries: Democrats will deal with Hegseth if Trump doesn’t

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said Democrats will run Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “out of town” if they take the majority in the November midterms.

Jeffries told MS NOW that Democrats will take action to knock Hegseth off his perch atop the Pentagon if President Trump doesn’t push him out himself. Democrats have zeroed in on Hegseth as criticism of high gas prices amid the Iran war have become a key talking point on the campaign trail.

“Pete Hegseth needs to be pushed aside by the president, or we’re going to have to deal with that situation if he is not,” Jeffries told MS NOW.

Congress will vote on Hegseth’s impeachment — their only mechanism to remove the Pentagon chief — upon their return to Capitol Hill next month. Republican Rep. Thomas Massie (Ky.) kicked off the impeachment process in September. While Jeffries hasn’t disclosed whether he will vote for impeachment, he has long called for Hegseth’s removal.

“What I’m inclined to do is to act consistently with what I’ve said relative to Pete Hegseth from the very beginning: I called for Pete Hegseth to be fired by Donald Trump in the spring of 2025. He is deeply unqualified,” Jeffries said.

But impeachment is not the only way Democrats could try to put pressure on Trump officials if they win in November. Sen. Adam Schiff (D- Calif.) told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that Democrats should have Hegseth testify on the Starlink satellite disruption in Ukraine if they take the chamber.

Ukraine uses Starlink , a satellite internet service run by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, for communication on the battlefield and Starshield — a military version of the tech controlled by the U.S. government — for things like drone warfare. The war-torn country recently experienced a disruption in their Starlink connection; Musk and Trump have each denied responsibility.

“Defense Secretary Hegseth should be brought in,” Schiff told NBC. “Anyone who has knowledge of what happened.”