Transcript of Rep. Pat Ryan on Expected Impeachment Proceedings Against Pete Hegseth

Also, as though Donald Trump, the commander in chief, has like zero agency over himself. In my view, they're all freaking war criminals. Now, Congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky, as described as a famously anti-Trump GOP lawmaker, he told CNN he plans to trigger a vote to impeach Hegseth when Congress returns next week. Multiple GOP sources say that they expect that vote to pass. I'm curious what that will look like. Congressman Massie says, "There is one contingency in which I won't introduce the articles of impeachment: Hegseth resigns."

I want to show you Democratic Congressman Jason Crowe. He's a veteran. Here's what he had to say about Pete Hegseth and the type of oversight and accountability that's now going to be coming to the Defense Department, with Democrats taking control of the House. Let's play it.

We've been covering that here on the MeidasTouch network. I mean, literally dozens of two-star, three-star, four-star. I mean, our top talent, some of the most beloved members of our military, like Army Chief of Staff General Randy George and Randy George and his wife are like, I can't even stress enough how beloved these people are within the Army. General Christopher Donohue, U.S. Army Commander of Europe and Africa. I mean, so many others. And obviously, we need an investigation into what is going on there.

Also, some of the latest reporting from Fox and others is that the Trump regime is potentially thinking about escalating this catastrophic war that Hegseth and others are still pushing for that right now, even as we know that a lot of our military bases in the region have been destroyed. Our logistical center in Bahrain has been destroyed over there, and that's why we had to move to Diego Garcia from the logistical standpoint. I want to talk about all of this. I want to bring in Democratic Congressman Pat Ryan, Army veteran, served two combat tours in Iraq, West Point, Grad.

Great to see you, Congressman Pat Ryan. I mean, you're also on the key committees here: House Armed Services Committee, the Subcommittee on Cyber Information Technology, Subcommittee on Intelligence and Special Operations, and of course, given your background, we have a lot to discuss. But I just want to start off with Pete Hegseth, impeachment. What do you know about it? What can you tell us? What's your position and the position of others who you speak with in the Democratic Caucus?

To be clear, though, as you said, Trump was the final decision-maker here. Vance, who's already trying to distance himself now from this war, absolutely can and should not be able to distance himself. I believe Pete Hegseth has the blood on his hands of 22 Americans who were killed, hundreds wounded, many of them with lifelong debilitating injuries and traumatic brain injuries, PTSD, and he's taken zero accountability for that. And so when we get back in session next week, there will be this privileged resolution.

Every representative will have to stand and be counted. And will you do the right thing on behalf of our troops, 50,000 of them still in harm's way, all of us paying the price at the pump, with home heating oil, with fertilizer for our farmers? And I believe that the impeachment resolution will pass the House.

Whatever it is, I do think there will be a good number of Republicans. Certainly Democrats will be united. And then the question is, what's next? Does Hegseth get the message? Does Trump get the message? Does, you know, can we actually get it over and passed through the Senate? I think we're in uncharted territory, though, given the message sent the other night. And I also think it's important to remember, in 2006, after a similar walloping of George W. Bush in those midterms, a few days later he fired Rumsfeld.

And so I think that is an interesting comparison point here.

I mean, it's a TBI. It's a very serious injury. And just, I mean, you've been in combat. I mean, seeing where the Iranian ballistics landed relative to those containerized barracks, if they hit near those areas, I mean, those service members are going to have TBIs. And I saw where they hit. I see the satellite footage that's being shared. So I believe, my own view, I don't want to I try not. I try to be as diligent with the facts. I believe the number of TBIs could actually be in the thousands that are being covered up, that they're hiding.

And the bases, I believe the damage is far more extensive than the amount that they're saying. What are you able to share about that? I just want to see what I'm reporting, what you're seeing.

But, you know, I still have friends serving and contacts, and a lot of us veterans that serve do. So we're getting the ground truth. And the ground truth is that we have just done irreparable damage to not only our moral standing, but our munitions stockpile is depleted. Pretty much every base in the Middle East is now uninhabitable, and we still have a huge number of troops on carriers and on ground, 50,000 total folks still in the theater. And they just aren't being honest with us.

And so it really does harken back to the worst of the Vietnam era. And all of that is going to come out. I mean, we are going this is going to be oversight at a level that has not been seen in the modern era because it's such a corrupt and opaque Pentagon. It requires us to ramp up our game. And, you know, I said it the other day, I'll say it again. Pete Hegseth, you better buckle up, lawyer up. We are coming at you full bore.

I guess, one, how bad is that? You know, talk to us in terms of the morale within the military, but talk to us about how you would do oversight there. I mean, can we expect some of these generals and admirals to be called? I mean, what does that look like?

And Hegseth is just seen as what he is, which is a clown who's totally focused on culture war BS rather than actual preparation for and fighting of successful wars. So the damage there is going to be very long-lasting. We have a lot of work to do to improve it. When it comes to the oversight component of that, yes, I certainly hope we can get some of those folks to come forward. I mean, I think there's nothing more patriotic, especially right now, than speaking truth and shedding light on what has happened, the level of cover-up and failure.

I think it would be a huge service to our country's safety. We also, I've been in regular touch with the families of several of the soldiers and airmen killed in this war so far, and their level of absolute righteous fury about the loss of their loved ones, the failure to get good information, the failure for anyone at a senior level to take accountability for the literal death of their loved ones.

They are, I think, very much ready to come forward. Some of them have already spoken publicly. I'm sure you saw one of the husband of one of our fallen question Vance in a town hall, and it was a pathetic showing by Vance, who claimed that he wasn't aware of these deaths of American troops in war. I mean, it's just stunning. We also, I think, are going to see a lot more people come forward once they understand that this is a right and noble thing to do.

And then there was an active cover-up of that, and they've been basically putting it in the Donald Trump two-week loop, right? We'll get it in two weeks. We'll get it in two weeks. We'll get it for you then. We'll get it for you then. And they want to cover this up. At the United Nations, they've referred this as a war crime, which is what I believe it is. I mean, there's a lot of war crimes being committed here by this Trump regime. What do you know about it? What can you share? And, you know, it seems like they're still actively covering these heinous war crimes up.

And my colleague, Sarah Jacobs, who's on the Armed Services Committee with me from California, she has been especially focused on the Manab situation, the cover-up. She's been battling publicly and privately, and we've been backing her up, of course, with the Pentagon to get this report out. We know they've completed these assessments, and they just will not release them to Congress, which, again, is a violation, a blatant violation of the law. And then, you know, we need to get this out to the public, and there needs to be full accountability. And it all, to me, comes back to Pete Hegseth and just another in the long list of Massie had prior eight articles of impeachment.

And certainly what happened at Manab, the extrajudicial killings, the murders of innocent civilians in Central and South America that we haven't, you know, talked about that started a year ago, the kidnapping of a foreign leader as bad as Maduro was. I don't think that's the way we want anybody operating in the world that we live in. So it is a very long list. And we are just, as Jason said in that video, I just don't think they understand, especially for those of us that serve.

We are coming at them just full, full bore. And we have the receipts. We already are in communication with a lot of folks that I think will provide incredibly compelling and disturbing information.

But we're also we have troops on the ground doing the bidding of these global authoritarian puppets of Trump in South America right now, where there are troops that are like in war, you know, in war zones, which they're claiming they're going after narco-terrorists that they use. But we know that Trump and these kind of puppet stooges of authoritarian dictatorship just use that also as a way to go after their enemies. And so there's a whole war, like, going on in South America, Central America already.

And we still, even then, couldn't get anybody to say, to own that and just say that that is what this is. And now it's in the hundreds of folks that have been killed. So clearly, it's morally and legally wrong. It's also really not proven effective. And so we're also expending a huge amount of resources. And once again, I think those participating in these actions, I doubt they feel good going home at night about these kinds of things. And so it just has this corrosive effect on morale.

And we're starting to see that in recruiting numbers, both quantitatively and qualitatively.

They're finding a lot of other ways to evade it than just the boats. There's a lot of other technology that's developed. But any event, what are you hearing about the issue of recruitment and morale? Because obviously, Trump and Hegseth lie about everything.

I mean, they were literally living in squalor, in cramped quarters. And that's what it comes to. And then we've also started hearing now from a bunch of the families. I've just been in contact with several of the families from Bahrain that were overnight because this war was so hastily called into action. They ripped these families from their homes in the middle of war, sent them wherever they could go. Now they're cutting off the Trump administration is cutting off the funding to allow them to stay in the temporary location that they are, but not saying they can't go back to the homes they were in in Bahrain.

So just all across the board. It's just for a party that claims to be, you know, for the military and for the troops, sending them to stupid wars, not taking care of the families while they're there, not having a plan to win the war. And by the way, they're massively trying to cut VA funding as more and more veterans are wounded and need care. They're trying to cut, for example, tinnitus, which is one of the most common injuries from these overhead drones that are striking troops. And so it's just on every level.

It's an absolute betrayal.

But I watched this guy's videos of himself, and they look like, you know, some wacko MAGA traitor. It looks like some Baghdad Russian propagandist there. We control the Strait of Hormuz. Look, I'm flying over. I'm like, no one believes this. And you're the head of CENTOM. What's your perspective on what you see there?

And then you saw in the Navy some bombshell reporting that Admiral Frank Kedie was pushed out by the new chief of naval operations, who was back-channeling through his brother to Hegseth that, don't worry, I'm your guy. And all of a sudden, we look, as you said earlier, a lot like these autocratic, authoritarian regimes that we absolutely never want to look like in the way that we operate our militaries, that are loyal to an individual rather than loyal to the values enshrined 250 years ago in our Constitution.

There's no intelligence in the plan. We've got two aircraft carriers, 1,000 kilometers plus in the Arabian Sea that kind of sit there. Trump brags that we're pirates and that we're basically using our proud freaking Navy as, like, an oil escort operation where oil was getting out of the Strait of Hormuz. Iran's able to strike 5 to 10% of the vessels, which increases the risk premium so that it costs $1.5 million a day for a very large crude carrier to get out, which already adds $33 a barrel to the cost, even if it gets out, but Iran striking it.

Iran seems to be utilizing a clear strategy, multifaceted, mosaic, a lot of layers to it. I know who their leaders are because I'm studying it now, because our regime here lies to us. And then you just have Trump saying, oh, their leaders are dead. Nobody knows who they're dealing with. And meanwhile, not only are they out maneuvering us like crazy on the military side, they're, like, literally in front of our eyes building a new security architecture in the region with Russia and China.

And you see the meetings of Wang Yi and Lavrov going back and forth. You see the Mecca pact and how it's all relating. And then this Trump regime serves it up here like, you know, we've won the war. And I'm like, what is this? Like, what the this is just this is dumb. This is, like, the dumbest thing I've ever even seen. Of course, we shouldn't have been it, but I struggle with it. You could see I struggle with this every day, and I try to understand it that way. Talk to us about that, because there's no strategy.

And obviously, the midterms sent a very clear message that the public never wanted this war, certainly doesn't want it anymore, and just vehemently rejects everything that goes along with it. And so we are now in, like, the word fiasco continues to come to my mind because it just it's like it's a quicksand situation, and I don't think we're ever going to get back to how we were in the Strait. Meanwhile, to your point, I mean, the Chinese are popping champagne bottles on a daily basis as we hurt our own ability to deter them and deal with them, as we pull carrier strike groups from the Pacific, which there's now not a carrier strike group there for several months, which is just absolutely irresponsible and incredibly dangerous.

And so, again, the damage that we're going to have to try to put these pieces back together and build something better, it is it's really tough. But I'm a glass-half-full person. I think it gives us hopefully some opportunity to try to build something out of sort of the ashes here if we can make it through another two years. And that's why us pounding on this now in the majority, in a massive historic majority in both the House and the Senate, it really does give us real leverage, the power of the purse. I introduced a bill called the No Funds for Iran War Act.

It's just very straightforward. It says not a single dollar can be spent on this war or in the region around it. I think we might be in a position where I can finally get some Republicans on that, I hope. And that's certainly going to be something that will pass once we take charge in January.

Companies that are in on any of the violation of sanctions laws, as you talked about, these defense companies that all of a sudden Trump's family and sons are on the board of or have massive shares in, if, you know, that the level of corruption that while American soldiers are dying, we're all paying $450 plus at the pump, that Trump's kids and family and cronies are these defense stocks have nearly doubled of the big defense primes. And the oil companies, of course, ExxonMobil's doubled over the last year.

They will absolutely be brought forward.