Transcript of GOP Blocks First Vote on Pete Hegseth’s Impeachment

Yesterday, outgoing Representative Thomas Massey introduced eight articles of impeachment for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, which could see a vote on the floor later this week. Hegseth insists he's not worried, but the White House is reportedly checking whether Republicans have the votes to impeach him. He may also be losing his potential soft-landing Tennessee governor-elect, Marsha Blackburn, reportedly has no plans to appoint him to her Senate seat. There's also political calculation for Trump. Republicans can still choose Hegseth's successor while they control the House.

Come January, Democrats take over. Hegseth held a press conference early this morning. Let's take a listen.

You see, we've seen this show before. They impeached President Trump over a perfect phone call. They impeached him again in his final week in office. Both times they failed. 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. We destroyed terror regimes' capabilities.

We sank the boats carrying poison into our communities. We put a narco dictator in handcuffs. These are not high crimes. This is the job. And it's the job well done.

So you have Ted Cruz on his podcast where he goes into this room and he becomes honest and he says all the things that normal people are thinking, which is like the House had to be adjourned because they had the votes to impeach Hegseth. And certainly when you look at the new crop of senators coming in, or even some of the outgoing Republicans that have found their YOLO in the final moments, maybe that they would want that to be their final vote that they cast, especially those that made a big stink about him and then voted to confirm. You know who I'm talking about.

But now Trump is defiant about it and has even said that he would keep Hegseth if he gets impeached. So do you think he's not in as much of a dangerous position this morning than he was two days ago?

I just don't see how he survives this, but maybe there's some mechanics here that I'm missing. What are your thoughts?

I think that it's very smart strategically to return to how I led with this, to put everything that he's done into one bucket because, you know, if you say Maduro, for instance, then the president is thrilled with how all of that went, especially because they're ignoring the fishermen that we killed in boats in the Caribbean and God knows what else has gone on. Saying that they followed all of the protocols, there has been a number of folks who would more traditionally be conservative about this, who have spoken out about the fact that they circumvented the War Powers Act.

That's a question for Hakeem Jeffries, how quickly that will come up as an agenda item once he's speaker of the House to make sure that there are actually votes on these things. But he did say, "This is a show trial of me and the president." And that's how I think he links it together. And that's how he gets President Trump to be supportive when you think about the autopsies that have already been written of the election, including the one from J.D. Vance, even what the president said Sunday on 60 Minutes about the Iran War being a factor in the election, though he said he would do it again because he needs to make sure that Iran doesn't have a nuclear weapon.

But tying them together, I think, is a very smart strategy for Pete and saying that this war was started 47 years ago. The average American doesn't care. They just saw an inflation report come in hotter than expected again, though gas on the national average just went below $4, I think, for the first time since July 19th. But I see what he's doing, and I think that if you are in that vulnerable of a position, it is the smartest thing that you can do. I guess is my final determination.

In other words, okay, even if the president is not going to put pressure on him to resign, are they on the eve of this vote going to decide that they want this broadcast live when they count the votes and find that they're going to lose and he's going to be removed?

You're going to have a senator, Annie Andrews, from South Carolina for six years, right? You're going to have this in Kansas. Texas decades to undo if they think that they even can. So you would think that they would be looking at the big picture stuff and expanding their minds, but they're just getting smaller and smaller. Stephen Miller is a small-minded move. Defending Pete Hegseth like this is a small-minded move, and it shows that nobody is listening to the voters about what happened on Tuesday.

You know, we weren't crazy for considering the fact that he might legitimately think that Dana White should be the new press secretary. And I think they're going to throw things at us that will boggle the mind, to say the least. And I think it's all a joke. This is like a practical joke with nuclear codes, which is the scariest joke of all. And that's what I felt about seeing Dana White on our screens when everyone was desperate to see my face.

Annie Andrews and Senator Bernie Sanders both voice support for the idea. Cauchy has the odds at 36% that he's impeached before the new year. Do you think this is a serious possibility, the impeachment of RFK Jr.?

I'd be curious as to what exactly the articles of impeachment would look like. I think, you know, obviously Thomas Massey releasing what everyone's going to be voting on vis-a-vis Pete Hegseth is important, and you'd have to see that as well from Senator-elect Andrews and Senator Sanders. But why not at this point when you think we've spent two years calling these people completely unqualified for the job? Maybe it's time to do something about it.

Do you think as soon as the resolve one way or another with Hegseth that they just immediately turn their sights on RFK? And does RFK benefit again from Stephen Miller? It appears that part of their strategy is, or at least Stephen Miller's strategy is to kind of embrace the MAHA movement and more tightly associate the administration with the MAHA movement and RFK Jr. Do you think they're already doing kind of trying to lay groundwork for killing the momentum around this?

Everyone is expendable, though Stephen Miller has obviously been there for the long haul and ultimately, you know, one of, if not the most trusted person in President Trump's orbit. And I went and listened to oversight, soon-to-be oversight chair Robert Garcia talking about what accountability looks like. And the title of his talk was Lawyer Up, which is what he tweeted out in the middle of the results coming in on Tuesday night. And, you know, that immediately hits people and they think, is this just going to be a revenge tour?

Like you said, right? If you're kind of memeing and throwing haymakers like that, you know, saying essentially, we're just going to throw you in jail, which is what people would take from it. And the base loved it, right? That's what they want to hear. They feel like crimes have been committed that there has been, to say it in the nicest terms, a lack of faithfulness to the Constitution, at the least. But you got to be really careful about this because I do think it is one of their most potent attack lines against Democrats using this lawfare argument.

And Hakeem Jeffries has to be very careful in how he treads these lines because he's got an agenda to get through, and his agenda is driven by affordability concerns. It's not driven by whatever is going to happen to Pete Hegseth and RFK Jr. and Elon Musk and the Trump kids, et cetera, even though it is a piece of it, government corruption, a huge issue to people, and this desire for accountability, not for made-up crimes, but for what they've actually done to the government and what abuses may have been committed.

So I think you're right to point out how delicate a line has to be towed in all of this.

But again, the line is the following. And a cautionary tell is Lieutenant, I think it's Alexander Vindman, who was the, raised the most money. He was a candidate for Senate in Florida, was leading for the entire race for the Democratic nomination, and then lost the nomination. And people basically described his campaign as a failed attempt to have an impeachment nostalgia tour. That's just not what Democrats, at least in Florida, appear to be animated about. So as you pointed out, the line between what people perceive as accountability, and also to be blunt, the people who are most angry are going to be the most animated and vocal online.

But I would argue that the groups that swung hardest to blue, while they want accountability and corruption, actually corruption was a big issue for them, I do think that they're more focused or I don't think the Democrats are going to be able to keep these swing voters if they just go on what's called, you know, for lack of a better term, an accountability slash revenge tour. And the question is, at what point does it begin to occupy, when does it become the main issue or what Democrats, when people say, well, what's changed now that the Democrats are in office?

I would hope that the first thing isn't, you know, these C-SPAN hearings, you know, going for resignations that people say that is happening. It's accountability. These people deserve additional scrutiny. But sooner rather than later, I hope we see, you know, a bill for universal healthcare, raising minimum wage, housing credits, whatever it is. I think a decent litmus test for how they're doing is going to be that there's an ounce of quote-unquote accountability or whatever you want to call it, but a pound of actual policies.

She completely effed it up in the process of all of this, culminating in leaving Jim Clyburn sitting in a church waiting for you with your staff, not even knowing that you're across town with Mike Rogers. Like, unbelievably uncool. But this woman has what, 30 days left of this job is probably in complete freefall in thinking about what her life looks like now. She probably isn't going to be able to run for office again as a Democrat with this kind of stain on her record vis-à-vis the party.

Like, I'm sure Nancy probably would feel differently if she was the one that was still in charge of the Caucus. This feels a little bit like nice grandma vibes on a comparative basis. And she would have been harsher maybe if she were the one that was about to get the gavel again. But I'm, leave her alone is my feeling.

And while I don't agree, you know, we wish her the best. Next. That's it. We keep accusing the MAGA movement of being a cult. And part of the cult is that when someone leaves, you treat them like an apostate. You treat them as if they've done something morally wrong by not signing up for every aspect of the cult. So this is, I think this is an obvious situation in that they should just, like you said, let her get back to her life. I can't imagine she needs Democrats piling on. In Mississippi, Scott Collum has been looking for big-name Democrats to energize the base of Southern Democrats.

He advocated for Kamala Harris to campaign in the state against the advice of his advisors. Now, narrowly in the lead, Collum is crediting Kamala Harris's appearance in Mississippi for bringing attention to the state's crumbling hospitals. Do you think this says anything about Vice President Harris's chances for her 2028 presidential run? Was this seen as successful? Because there was some debate, just as there was debate around whether Trump getting close to a candidate was a positive or a negative. I felt the same vibes with Vice President Harris around whether Democrats should campaign, how closely they should campaign with her.

Does this make her a more attractive or compelling person for issues and perhaps bring her back into the light for 2028?

So I think it's a good thing.

Jess, we haven't checked in on him in a while. Yeah, Governor Shapiro sort of, he has lost some of the, I want to say mojo. And by the way, at this point, I'm not sure you want mojo. It probably isn't a bad idea to be a little bit in the shadows at this point. But we haven't heard from him in a while, or I would say he hasn't gotten a lot of coverage. What's the theory of the case for Shapiro heading into 2028? How would you handicap it? And obviously, it is very, very early. But what do you think, where would you put Shapiro right now in the increasingly crowded race on the Democratic side?

You know how they've been in a fight for years and not spoken. Now when you look at where the Caucus is, obviously going into this, well, we're going to have like 56 senators in the end. Like, that makes John Fetterman not important at all to the Caucus. Like, there was a scenario in which we would have to be concerned about where his vote was going. And we've talked about this on Raging Moderates before. Like, what will Fetterman do? Do you think there's any possibility? Now it doesn't matter. He can do whatever he wants.

I would still like him to vote with Democrats where it is appropriate. And he made that point. He still votes with them, what, 92, 93% of the time. But we are in Fetterman-proof majority territory. And I think that Shapiro has a very strong case to make. And people were going bananas for him at this conference. Super excited. Wes Moore was also there. People chasing him all around. It's good to see folks out and about telling their stories about what they've accomplished. I mean, Josh Shapiro, JB Pritzker, and Wes Moore all won reelection on Tuesday night and all have interesting cases to make.

Huge night as well for Andy Beshear and what he pulled off with the Democratic Governors Association. Like I said yesterday, 75% of Americans are going to be governed by a Democrat come January, which.

But if you're a money manager and you're managing people's money and you increase the value of the stocks you pick for them from $100 to 200, on that $100 I would call commission, you qualify for capital gains or lower interest rate. And it's called the carried interest loophole. And it applies to an industry that is arguably the most, I won't say overcompensated, but the most well-compensated industry in history. I think we're going to look back on this era. For the last 20, 30 years, there has never been a group of people, a smaller group of people who have made more money than the alternative investments community.

And in addition to making a ton of money, they get to keep more of it and not pay ordinary income taxes on what is effectively a commission. You're supposed to get capital gains tax deduction or lower rates when you put your own capital at risk. This is not putting your own capital at risk. This is putting other people's capital at risk. And that was part of the infrastructure bill. That is, they were going to do away. They were going to close this loophole. It had to be stuck back in or ripped out of the infrastructure bill because Senator Kristen Sinema, who took $700,000 from the private equity industry, she became a holdout.

And she had that kind of power, as did, remember the senator from West Virginia.

But this, what you reference is really important because when it's this close, the temptation to become the swing vote and then garner the attention and leverage is too great for someone not to pop up and say, you know, I'm worried about X, I'm worried about X, Y, and Z, and we don't have that.

Like as many things as she can change, you know, from protecting women's healthcare, getting religion out of our schools. She's doing all of the things that people would want her to be able to do. Do you really think that in a presidential, Texas would vote blue? Something about that feels different to me. And maybe it's still the cautious Democrat that lives inside of me and continues to churn my stomach and still say nauseously optimistic when we had, you know, the best night since 1974 is maybe, you know, piping up too much.

But I feel like a total change in strategy where you think, oh, Texas over Pennsylvania. Like the Sun Belt versus the Rust Belt, I get. Because the Rust Belt hasn't been particularly reliable for Democrats. And then you look at the incredible candidates coming out of the Sun Belt. I get that refocusing, but this idea that we have, you know, this election and then Texas is on the map for us on a presidential level feels too shaky to my nervous system.

I mean, we can dream, but I think again, I just don't see this red riptide. I don't, you know, Trump was on the ballot. When someone else is not on the ballot, I got to think Texas remains reliably red. I mean, we can dream, but no, I don't realistically see Texas being in play. I think the governor, Governor Shapiro, is absolutely correct that our job is to hold on to those swing states and we can dream about Texas and keep tabs on it. But again, I feel like this is, I think we're way over our skis at this point thinking Texas is in play for 2028 in terms of the presidential race.

What are your thoughts?

It seems like there's trouble in MAGA world. What do you think is going on here?

Obviously, Steven Miller is going to be, you know, has a bigger job and, you know, she says that the podcast is a lot of work. I get it. We do a podcast. It is a lot of work. I think they are trying to get out of the way a bit. And Laura Loomer is afraid. And this actually came up on my panel on Saturday about influencers taking money for political posts. I was curious what you think about it because I was on with Carlos Espina, who we've had on Raging Moderates, you know, one of the biggest influencers in the ecosystem, especially in the Spanish language space.

And he was talking about the balance between, you know, it has to be something that you believe in, but also people need to make money. So like people are doing this as a full-time job. And if there's no money associated with it, how are you supposed to, like, pay rent and eat, which was the number one issue for all of these voters? So what do you think about it? Putting aside what Laura Loomer is doing, I'm talking about with full disclosure of folks being paid.

And, you know, people don't mind a podcast that runs ads because it's pretty obvious that this is a paid advertisement or you disclose that they're a data partner or whatever it might be. There's nothing wrong with that. The problem is.

It's a food fight at a funeral. And that is the outrage economy always needs a villain and defeat kind of removes it. So the influencers are turning on each other. And the undisclosed paid posts raise FTC disclosure questions. It's just, this is a very small conflict of interest. I don't see this as that big a deal. A lot of influencers have gotten tagged and maybe had to pay a fine for not disclosing that they were getting compensated. The bigger issue here is how they're turning on each other, right?

That they seem to have, they're shooting their arrows at Democrats. It just feels for a brief time, Democrats have this pretty serious shield surrounding them. So now they're moving on each other. Everybody is pointing fingers at the other. But I think this, I would think this story kind of comes and goes. I don't think this is going to be in the news cycle very long. The more interesting one is Macron, the Macron family going after Candace Owens. Your thoughts?

And she's one of these completely like heterodox stops for folks. And she's very talented. You know, I think being able to do that, I wouldn't be able to, you know, talk for a couple of hours straight, you know, on my own. I certainly also, my imagination can't go to the places that hers do to invent this idea that Brigitte Macron is actually a man, no matter what pictures you might be looking at. But, you know, she certainly has a big following, very dedicated.

But, you know, if you're going to spread rumors like that and then you're not going to give it up if the law says people can move forward against you, I certainly think they have that right. And I understand why the Macrons don't think that this is something that you can just ignore.

So you have to give the people who do these individual monologues or, you know, I do it on Prof G of all the podcasts I do, hands down the most difficult is Prof G because it's just me. You know, you can't, some of the friction and some of the ease, I know I get on when I get on this with you with the right data that if I'm not, for whatever reason, I know that you're going to be able to fill in the blanks and that we'll create some friction between each other or some sparks, whatever it is, to fill those empty voids. She is, I hate to say this, you know, she's a talented person, but this stuff, I just, I'm shocked it's still in the news cycle.

I'll be curious, the law around, I believe defamation is you have to show malice that you generally want to hurt these people. You have to show that you know your information was false and you continue to spread it despite that. And three, that it's causing you economic harm. So this will be, but this will get a lot of attention when this case comes up. All right, let's move to listener questions. Sam asks, who do you think will actually be press secretary? Jess?

My worst nightmare, and I guess now that he's chief of staff, it's not going to happen, but some people were joking around about Steven Miller being the press secretary. And I would have to, at the ripe age of 42, retire from the world if Steven Miller were the press secretary. So I think, I don't think the actual Dana White has much of a chance considering what's gone on the past few days, but I think they're going to rotate for a while. What do you think?

I think it would be fantastic content and help a lot of people also feel better about what we're doing. You know, if you don't like Hakeem Jeffries, how he communicates, you don't like Chuck Schumer. And I mean, we'll see now if Chris Van Holland's actually getting in and, you know, what's going to happen with leadership there. But like, let's just get a good talker where the party's full of good talkers.

But this feels like an opportunity to find somebody who has real cinematic skill on the Democratic side and to have what feels like a fairly high status, you know, press briefing. And I think the bench is so strong on the Democratic side that it wouldn't be who to pick, but who not to pick. All right, Tiffany wants to know, what do you guys think about near attendant antagonizing the left? Jess, your thoughts?

We just made it work on Tuesday night. So that's what you're seeing.

And if you look at, as you've pointed out, the majority of the people who won, they would probably be best described as moderates. I think that's, you know, a conversation. We don't need to have an argument on the left. I mean, this is an enormous victory for the left. Biggest victory probably in half a century. And to not just sort of say, well done and high five each other, even for just a moment, to me seems very unproductive. Benjamin asks, what is Elon's new tax reality going to be in Texas? Huh.

So the question over the longer term is, and I think this would be, I think Democrats would be smart to do this in terms of proposing new tax policy. Even if it doesn't go through, I think they should propose policies that effectively outline their agenda and their platform moving into 28. But another pretty big tax loophole that needs to be closed is that Bezos or Musk can create wealth in a state, in states like Washington and California and benefit from their infrastructure, benefit from the fact that a lot of the most talented human capital ends up in Washington, California.

The fact that Californians spend so much money and energy on creating an unbelievable university system that produces some of the brightest people for technology, whether it's a great, you know, whether that's the Huskies, a great University of Washington system, obviously the Cal State, University of California, to basically leverage and build your wealth in large part. We had Governor Newsom on stage a few days ago, and he pointed out that California investors invested $350 million in tax credits into Tesla.

And then to aggregate 10, sometimes hundreds of billions in wealth and then piece out to a low tax state because, quote unquote, according to Jeff Bezos, he wants to spend more time with his father. And then when he finally sells the stock, as long as he's been a resident, and you have to be there, I think, for longer than a year, you enjoy zero state taxes versus 13.5% in California. What we need to do is what we do with options. And that is, if you exercise a capital gain on options, not on equity you get as a founder, you have to pay the tax on the amount that was accreted or when the, where the options were vested.

So if 75% of your options vested while you were a resident of California, the capital gain on those options is taxed in the state where it vested. We need to do the same thing with founders' equity or with shares. And that is, you can't or you shouldn't be able to aggregate $120 million in equity. And then as you begin to sell it after leveraging the incredible infrastructure, these high tax states move to a low tax state. I just, that loophole needs to be closed. And I also think it's going to be part of the same package where people decide to start taxing or that it what triggers a capital gain tax is when you borrow against stock, because the basic construct for how the mega wealthy get more mega wealthy is they never sell their stock.

They buy their stock or they're awarded, they were awarded their stock when they start a company and then they borrow against it to fund their life, thereby letting their capital or their stock grow tax deferred. And this is essentially, you know, a trick for getting exceptionally wealthy. And I would imagine the same package is going to say, okay, if you borrow money against your stock, you're sort of realizing a gain on that stock and it should trigger some sort of tax. But this is a structural issue around our high tax states who these entrepreneurs benefit from.

Should they not pay it, pay it backward, if you will? What are your thoughts?

Musk, but there should be no guarantees of getting to run rough shot across our system, you know, getting special deals that other folks wouldn't be entitled to. So.

So if you were to say, okay, we're going to give $200 billion for infrastructure buildout for chips, but any chip company is eligible for that. That is, I would argue, good governance. When you say we're taking a stake in Intel, which immediately puts at a regulatory disadvantage the chip companies that don't have a stake in Intel, that's just bad governance. And I don't think the president or a governor, other than a positive light, should be talking about individuals or individual companies.

So yes.