Make New York Post a Preferred Source Secretary of War Pete Hegseth attending a Veterans Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery on Nov. 11, 2026. AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein Democrats need a scalp. And that scalp is almost surely going to belong to Secretary of War Pete Hegseth.
Impeaching President Trump for the third time holds far too many political risks with no corresponding upside.
Another prosecution of the president, in the year of “affordability,” would only make Democrats look distracted by petty partisan politics and personal vendettas, rousing independent anger.
Hegseth? His impeachment would satiate some partisan bloodlust without ticking off independents.
Most polling finds Hegseth is the least popular member of Trump’s cabinet.
This is why House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is a “hard yes” on impeaching Hegseth in 2027, describing him as one of the most incompetent and unqualified defense secretaries in history.
Jeffries has apparently forgotten that Joe Biden’s highly qualified Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin not only disappeared for weeks at a time without informing Congress (or anyone noticing), but also oversaw the chaotic and inept withdrawal from Afghanistan — in which a suicide bomber murdered 13 American service members.
Jeffries publicly defended Austin after his disappearances, in case you think the impeachment plan is anything but partisan.
Though I’m skeptical Hegseth was the best person for the job, he’s proven to be a lot more capable than Lloyd Austin.
Support it or not, the initial military phase of the Iran war was extraordinarily successful, one of the most dominant military displays of precision and power in our history.
Within days the United States, with the help of Israel, had control of Iranian air, decapitated Iranian leadership, destroyed the Iranian navy and severely degraded the terror state’s ability to conduct regional warfare.
The war’s fits and starts and failed negotiations were all political decisions.
Then there was Operation Absolute, in which special forces bypassed Venezuelan air defenses and ground forces and, in around two and a half hours, captured communist dictator Nicolás Maduro and his wife, then transported them to New York City to face drug-trafficking indictments.
Hegseth also cleansed the military of a lot of the trendy progressive cultural quackery that sprouted up in the woke era (and perhaps will re-sprout soon enough.)
Meanwhile all five active-duty branches exceeded enrollment targets last year.
But even if Jeffries was right about Hegseth’s aptitude for the job, incompetence isn’t a “high crime or misdemeanor.”
Congress, of course, can impeach anyone it likes for any reason it conjures up — or, for that matter, no good reason at all.
In his failed articles of impeachment this week, Republican House member and crank Tom Massie accused the secretary of war of contravening the War Powers resolution.
This is almost surely going to be one of the indictments used by Democrats, as well.
Perhaps Massie is unaware that the president of the United States, not his cabinet, is charged with obtaining Congress’ consent for war.
If contravening that resolution was an impeachable offense, secretaries of defense under Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama should have been impeached, as well.
There’s certainly a far better case to be made for impeaching presidents who ignore the Constitution than cabinet members.
The House Republicans’ impeachment of Biden’s Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, for example, was based on his “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law.”
Which is substantively true — but Mayorkas was merely following the policy decisions of the duly elected president.
Even if Mayorkas had been removed by the Senate, Biden’s policies would have remained.
And these performative impeachments do nothing but degrade another important constitutional process.
You can dislike Hegseth. You can believe he’s terrible at his job.
But he’s done nothing to deserve impeachment.
David Harsanyi is a senior writer at the Washington Examiner. X: @davidharsanyi
