WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth presented the impeachment effort against him, scheduled for a procedural vote as early as Tuesday evening, as a slanderous attempt by a single renegade member of Congress seeking to damage President Donald Trump.

In a rare Pentagon news conference, the self-proclaimed secretary of war delivered a combative performance in which he lavished praise on his boss and pushed back at his detractors.

He predicted that those who seek to impeach him would fail as they did twice with Trump, a tacit acknowledgment that the impeachment effort has support from more than “one disgruntled guy.”

“They will fail again, and if standing with President Trump puts me in that company, I’ll take that company every day of the week,” Hegseth said.

Only two Cabinet officials have been impeached in U.S. history, and neither was removed from office by the Senate.

That Hegseth scheduled the news conference appeared to be a measure of how much he feels the pressure to defend himself. Hegseth has not addressed reporters at the Pentagon since May, not even when a Navy commander was killed in a helicopter crash in the Arabian Sea on July 1 or when three U.S. soldiers were killed in an Iranian missile attack on a base in Jordan on July 17.

On Tuesday, the defense secretary took questions only from media outlets widely viewed as conservative or friendly to the Trump administration.

The impeachment push is being led by Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., who is retiring at the end of his term after losing to a primary challenger backed by Trump.

Massie introduced articles of impeachment Monday that accuse Hegseth of violating the Constitution and federal law by ignoring the will of Congress in waging the war against Iran.

Other charges accuse Hegseth of carrying out unlawful strikes against suspected drug traffickers in boats in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific; unlawfully capturing Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro; conducting unauthorized military operations in Yemen; and using his office to conduct political retaliation against his critics, including Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz.

Hegseth vowed to fight for his job.

“It’s a political spectacle, a personal manifesto driven by ego and resentment,” Hegseth said. “Time for one man’s final days in Congress to try to do damage to this president, this country and, most irresponsibly, the warriors who defend it.”

Lawmakers and aides believe the impeachment charges have a solid chance of passing the House with the support of several Republicans. GOP leaders could delay an impeachment trial, and it would be exceedingly difficult to get two-thirds of the Senate to vote to convict Hegseth.

On Monday, Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, said the Senate “needs to put Pete Hegseth on trial so we can remove him for his catastrophic failure in Iran.”

In his remarks, Hegseth sought to conflate the attacks on him, outlined in the articles of impeachment, as an attack on the troops who took part in operations in Iran, the Caribbean and against the Houthis in Yemen.

“They answered the call, they executed, they won,” he said. “And on the eve of Veterans Day, these resolutions tell every one of them that their service was a crime.”

Hegseth has been battling Congress since early in his tenure. The Pentagon still does not have its $1.5 trillion overall budget request approved, with lawmakers pointing to Hegseth as among the reasons.

Massie first moved to bring the impeachment resolution to the floor before the midterms, prompting House Speaker Mike Johnson to call an early recess to avoid voting on the measure.

On Sunday, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the Democratic leader poised to become the next speaker of the House, said he was a “hard yes” on the idea. Democrats are widely expected to follow suit, with some Republicans having signaled that they would like to see the defense secretary gone, too.

House Republican leaders told members of Congress that they could hold a vote related to the effort to impeach as soon as 5:30 p.m. Tuesday. Republicans said they may call up a procedural motion on the charges. That could be a move to effectively kill the articles of impeachment or bottle them up in a committee.

But Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, warned that Hegseth faced two likely outcomes from the impeachment effort. “Either Hegseth is going to step down, either he will resign voluntarily or Trump will fire him,” he said in his podcast Monday. “Or if that does not happen, I think it is extremely likely, if not certain, that the House will impeach him.”

On Tuesday morning, Trump posted on social media that Hegseth’s remarks had earned an “‘A’ PLUS PLUS PLUS.”

The president also denigrated Massie, as he has for months, as a “TOTAL LOSER!”

—

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Helene Cooper, Robert Jimison, Eric Schmitt, John Ismay and Greg Jaffe
c. 2026 The New York Times Company