This episode of the IHIP News podcast reacts to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's response to impeachment articles over U.S. military strikes on boats and in Iran. The hosts argue that the articles target his conduct rather than the troops, and they debate who owns responsibility for the strikes.
Josh Welch, a criminal defense lawyer, weighs in on whether impeachment, pardons, state courts or a future Justice Department could bring accountability. Listeners will hear the discussion of Hegseth's press access, a senator's prediction about impeachment, and the hosts' proposal that Democrats elect Jack Smith as Speaker.
Many of the claims are opinions and remain unverified.
In this episode Angie Sullivan, Jennifer Welch, Josh Welch
This IHIP News episode on Hegseth's impeachment was made with the tool HappyScribe built to transcribe audio to text.
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All right, the MAGA implosions are already starting—get your popcorn. Low Tea Pete Hegseth calls a press conference, and they put out a statement: "If anybody acts out in the press room, we're going to kick people out." And I want to remind you, this is the same alpha male that installed a makeup and hair salon in the Pentagon press briefing room, which had never been installed before, because real soldiers go out and don't put on makeup and spray their hair. You know, he's all about the "gender-affirming" care at the Pentagon, but I digress.
Here he is, it is big time, big light, accountability. This is Step 1 in accountability: press conference. Hegseth responds to the impeachment. Play the clip.
These resolutions are a farce. They mock the Constitution, they attack the chain of command, and they criminalize the warfighters who execute lawful orders. This process hands our adversaries a propaganda victory.
This is a guy whose wife has to be in all of his group chats and emails to babysit him. He has to have a full-time babysitter, pumps.
And also, I would just point out that the message being sent, from what I am reading and the reports coming out of the, you know, men on the ground, the infantry, is that they are delighted that Pete Hegseth might be gone. And sending our adversaries a message? Bitch, you sent that message. We can't do shit. We go into wars we can't win, we run around and act like we're tough guys, and then we get testosterone shots. I mean, this guy has not read the articles in impeachment against him, because it does not go after the troops, it goes after him for war crimes.
It has nothing to do with the troops. And so I, for one, am just—I am so happy that we're having this conversation. He is a stain on the Department of Defense that will take—I mean, I don't know if it'll ever come off.
It will. It can come off. Just as quickly as they tore it down, we can move. We don't have to move incrementally anymore. We can restore it at a rapid click. Josh, this is where it's going to get interesting. So you see a little bit of Trump kind of throwing Pete under the bus, "We're going to blame Pete Hegseth for the war in Iran." Listen to this clip of Hegseth. Play it.
As for the articles themselves: Iran, the cartels, Maduro, Yemen, every one was a lawful operation ordered by the commander in chief, then ordered by myself, notified to Congress, and executed by American warriors who did their jobs.
Ordered by the commander in chief.
Playing a little hot potato with that. Right? When you kill 221 people on a boat outside of Venezuela, they're on fishing boats. You know, or when you, you know, go in and strike elementary schools in Iran. I mean, you know, nobody wants to accept ownership on that. And the only thing I think he's right about is the buck stops with Donald Trump on this war. And I'm going to agree with him on that. Now, the rest of it, you know, I don't think that he had the proper authorization to shoot schools.
I mean, I think Congress specifically prohibited that. That's one of the articles of impeachment, that he did that without Congress's authorization. And let's not forget that Congress, in theory, has to authorize these acts. And they didn't. And that's part of the basis for these articles of impeachment, is that they never sought Congress's approval to do this. So, and I remember, we remember in real time when these guys are shooting people in boats and they showed them on TV, like they got footage of it and showed it.
And you're thinking, who does that? You don't have the right to do that. And there was a big debate over whether or not it was a war crime and so forth, which it clearly, clearly was. I mean, based on what we read back in real time when it was happening. And that's the real debate here is what do we do with Pete Hegseth after this administration is over with and he's out of office, whether he's actually convicted, impeached, and convicted, or whether or not he's still here. Granted, he's going to receive a pardon, but a pardon is not going to save him from being charged with a war crime in an international court.
That's why the Marco Rubio is very busy trying to rip apart the ICC, because they know that if the incoming Democrats start restoring that to the ICC, the way around these pardons, obviously, number one is state court, which Steven Miller, sources have leaked, is terrified of the state courts. But we need to start messaging. They all need to go to The Hague. It needs to be—there needs to be a complete reckoning of all of this.
But Pam, she and I talk a lot about the personality type of these people. And we often make the mistake of projecting. If I was in their position, I would do XYZ. And I remind you, like, they're not capable of feeling shame. You can't shame the shameless. They're not capable of self-reflection. And this video right here perfectly exemplifies that. Play the clip.
Narration, a commander in chief with the courage to lead and the resolve to win. I stand behind every one of these operations. I was proud to execute them, and I would do it again.
He would do it again. He would kill innocent fishermen off the coast of Venezuela, little girls in Iran. He would do every single bit of this again: fire all the Black people, fire all the women, put on his makeup in his little makeup room, all of it. He'd just do it all again.
This is a man that has treated the Department of Defense like his own little call of duty game. "I'm such a big shot. I can do anything. I can kill people and we can watch it explode." And it's so exciting. This is a Secretary of Defense that dismantled the checks and balances within the Pentagon regarding hitting civilian targets, because he doesn't care about human life. He cares about feeling like a big boy and taking his testosterone and not being able to do a pull-up and sitting in a hot—you know, this guy is just—he is everything that we talk about being just a perfect example of what a man is not supposed to be.
He encapsulates the whole thing.
And this is where you get your popcorn. Here is Hegseth responding to Vance's criticism of the war, Josh. And Josh, you're the one that said that it's like he was writing an op-ed for an administration that he's not a member of. And so here is Hegseth responding to a question about that. Play the clip.
Mr. Secretary, Vice President JD Vance says the Iran war was a major reason why the Republicans lost in the midterms. Do you agree?
I respect the Vice President greatly, and I'm certainly not going to exchange in any finger-pointing. And thankfully, politics is not really my thing. I do the Department of War.
Sorry. You know what that is? There's the—you know, Trump is 80, Josh. All of these guys are young. They're looking at, "I need to politically survive this, and I need to have a political career beyond him, beyond Donald Trump." And so I think there could be some behind-the-scenes colluding, which this is—let's talk about this for a second. Did he appoint Steven Miller to chief of staff in case JD Vance started the 25th Amendment stuff? If they all decided, "Okay, for self-preservation, we get him out and we say, 'We realize he went too far.
We restored the Republican Party.'" He would need Marco. He would need Hegseth. But if Steven Miller's there, Steven Miller, quote unquote, "the skull cracker," would completely put the kibosh on such a thing to happen. Because I don't—these people are not loyal to each other.
They're not, but I don't think either of those guys have the spine to do it either. I mean, I just don't—like, nobody's got a spine in this administration. And so I think they would just take the path of least resistance and just exit the administration and go their own way versus trying to take on that tsunami with Donald Trump, because they're spineless pricks. They're just—they don't have it in them to do it. You know, and hearing Hegseth say he's not political.
With a presidential exploration committee or whatever he's doing.
Yeah. And then, you know, all the—we've seen him invoke Bible scriptures into his speeches and all the crazy shit he's done. And what's telling is that all of these career military guys, they're all just about to vomit, you know, watching how he conducts himself in the Department of Defense, how he leads. And you see that by the generals that leave or that he dismisses because they won't follow his unlawful orders.
And I compare it somewhat to what the Department of Justice is going through. You have these people that have lived their whole life for this cause, that it represents something that's truly great about this country. Then you get this leader in there and you see it all crumble before your eyes. This thing that you believed in, that you thought would always stay true to integrity and respect and the rule of law and honor and all that stuff. And it's just in shambles right now. And the only path out of this is to get a Democrat elected president.
That's the only path out of this. There's no other path other than impeachment. And I think these guys are too big a chicken shit to do one single thing. They can't even stand up to him and tell him that, "Hey, you've got the wrong fucking Dana White here." You know, they can't even do that. They can't even grab him and say, "Hey, don't say that. They met someone else over at the Department of Defense." They can't even do that. So then he tweets that shit out and then has to call Dana White and say, "Act like we've got a whole thing on Monday and fly and get your ass here." And, you know, it's just crazy.
The whole thing is just fucking.
It's a really good point. They can't even tap him and say, "Hey, sir, you're asleep during this press conference."
Your makeup's bad.
Yeah. They can't.
Much less impeach him.
Much less impeach him.
I just want to say one thing. Jennifer and I cut off that video because we were just like, "He doesn't have political aspirations." He goes on to say, and I wrote it down when I heard it live, he said, "JD Vance has been crucial to this."
That's perfect.
And I'm like, "That's political right there because JD's running from it." And you're saying, "Oh, the potato. Now the hot potato is going to JD." So he said, "JD Vance has been and is crucial, as have been the Republicans on the Hill." I don't think that was their exact quote, but he said the depth of his relationship with the Republicans on the Hill.
Oversight committee members will love that word "critical" or "crucial."
Crucial. That's what I thought.
Crucial.
Yeah, they'll love that.
All right. So I mentioned this at the top, but the Pentagon was trying to intimidate reporters at the press conference. Pop this up. At Pete Hegseth's briefing, at Pete Hegseth's, his name, Hegseth's briefing this morning, an official came out to tell reporters that if anyone gets out of line, they will be removed physically. Reporters shouted back, "What does that mean?" Officials said it meant to maintain decorum and added he was just relaying orders.
This is what gets me about these people. The war criminal that Pete Hegseth, the alleged war criminal, who authorized the killing of innocent little girls, innocent fishermen, and feels like, "Oh, yeah, this is great. Let's put these images on our Instagram page." Who feels like murder is Instagrammable. That's what we're dealing with. Wants to lecture journalists about decorum. The hypocrisy with these people has no bottom.
And these are the outlets that he called on at his press conference. Pop this up. OANN, Real America's Voice, Daily Wire, Fox News, Daily Signal, Washington Times. Most of the mainstream press corps remains in the back of the room in assigned seats. He is a coward. Ron Phillipkowski says he's a coward, afraid to take questions by real reporters. Pam, you're so right.
He's cosplaying call of duty shit. I mean, it's exactly what he's doing. But meanwhile, he wants to talk about all of this masculinity and we're going to.
The warrior ethos.
Remember the morning erection stuff that he's talking about? He's talking about the morning wood stuff. Just weird shit. This guy's got a makeup room. Could you imagine if somebody in Barack Obama or Joe Biden's, if Lloyd Austin, who was really an incredible Secretary of Defense, if he had a makeup room, can you imagine the racism and the homophobia that would come out of that from all of those organizations right there? These people are such bad faith actors. But that leads me to one of the most bad faith actors of them all, the lone Republican in the Lone Star state, Raphael.
Raphael, the cheeseburger obsessed senator, weighs in on Hegseth's impeachment. Play the clip.
Either Hegseth is going to step down, either he will resign voluntarily or Trump will fire him, or if that does not happen, I think it is extremely likely, if not certain, that the House will impeach him, because on the face of it, the votes are there. Now, it only takes him.
Raphael.
Well, and you know what else on this whole thing is the articles of impeachment, they've already said they have the votes, okay? So Trump has like posted last night and he posted this morning, Pete Hegseth gets an A-plus-plus. And I'm just like, yeah, until you fire him, because this motherfucker's not going to go down with the Hegseth ship. He's going to blame him. You know, Kimberly Guilfoyle, he didn't even know who that was after she got caught scamming and doing all that. So him, Pete Hegseth running around saying he so appreciates the backing of the president until you don't have it, which is coming, in my opinion.
Josh, final words here. It's going to be interesting because I think all of these guys and all of their alleged crimes that they've committed are so interconnected. I think there's so many people that were in the room and they all have to provide each other cover. And there's going to be somebody in the future, hopefully very near future, that is going to put a crack in that. These women that he's fired first, they're such misogynists. They think they have, "Oh, Pam, we've got Pam in line. We put her in charge of this.
We put, you know, Kristi Noem. She's too humiliated about big Titty Bryan." And on and on and on. But one of these men is going to eventually make a deal with somebody and loose lips are going to sink ships. And I can't wait for it. What do you think, Josh? As a criminal defense lawyer, that's what you try to do, right? What prosecutors are going to try to do is get somebody to make a deal to save themselves.
They're going to try to. Now, I'm a little bit upset that I'm not practicing criminal defense law in DC right now because it's getting ready to be a very lucrative practice for all these guys as they appear in front of oversight committees and in two years, if DOJ flips hands. But okay, so the key there is trying to flip someone. And we know that Trump's going to pardon damn near everyone. We know that Trump controls the Department of Justice. So you can take that agency, that's off limits. They're not going to investigate anyone.
And everyone, presumably in his cabinet, are going to have pardons. So then that's going to come down to either state court or it's going to come down to a new Department of Justice in 2028 to do that. And that remains to be seen. You know, that's where we have this big beef with Merrick Garland. We had this happen. We had Merrick Garland step in and start investigating Trump and his cronies, but he waited like 18 months before he did anything. And I think that was the beef is, what's the problem here? Why are we not going in and investigating these guys and convicting them and making sure this man can never run for office again?
And we're not going to fall into that trap again. I mean, that's not going to happen. We've seen how that works. There's no integrity politics left inside the Democratic Party to regain power and control and then say, "Hey, we're going to be nice and we're going to reach across party lines and we don't want to investigate and we just want everybody to get along and we're going to, you know, trudge a new path forward and all this bullshit." We can't do that. You got to go in and squeeze these guys. And we're going to see a little preview of that with these committees.
You're going to see a little preview of what that looks like. That's not the same thing as a prosecutor sending you a subpoena or searching someone's home, but it's going to be the first test for them to see who cracks, who's got pardons, who's going to say what, and so forth.
Let me just say, I saw this online. If the Democrats were really bold, somebody suggested online, Speaker of the House, Jack Smith.
That's my attorney general pick in 28.
Imagine if the Democrats all went in and appointed him as Speaker of the House. Because this is a very, this is the mistake Democrats make, you guys. Merrick Garland was Joe Biden's most crucial, consequential appointment. And they fumbled the bag because he played integrity politics. Right now, the Democrats are more than likely going to play integrity politics because, you know, Hakeem has, you know, we have this seniority system, it's his turn, et cetera, et cetera.
And we don't do bold things. We don't react to the crimes that we're seeing and the fascist threat in front of us in an appropriate manner. And the Speaker of the House doesn't have to be a Congressperson. It could be Barack Obama. It could be, you know, it could be Pomps, it could be Josh, it could be anybody. But how fucking great would it be if there was a huge revolt and the Democrats all went in to vote and they voted in Jack Smith and he got to go in.
It's the reverse Merrick, you know?
Yeah.
Because Biden did that because Mitch McConnell dicked over Merrick Garland on the SCOTUS decision. So he wanted to make him whole. And Obama appointed Merrick because he was a milquetoast moderate so that the Republicans would go along with it and vote him in. They still dicked over Obama. Jack Smith is the pit bull prosecutor that we need. Could you imagine if he were the Speaker of the House and if the Democrats did something that bold?
Oh my God. I mean, I wish the Democrats had the balls to do something like that.
I wish they did too. In my fantasies, they do.
Well, I don't think they do because we're seeing all this stuff with Jefferies and all this waffling around about him and how hard it is just to try to get this guy not to be the Speaker. So the thought that they would have a pair of balls and get someone that would do it, it would take away from someone wanting that position. And unfortunately, I think these backdoor deals are done. And that's unfortunate, but yeah, it'd be great.
Yeah. All right. That's all we have. Please like, subscribe here, wherever you get your podcasts. Become a member if you'd like and pre-order, not pre-order, it's already out. Order my book, Not Today Fascist. Leave us a comment and we'll be back later with more news.
Pete is panicking on his way out.
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