By KONSTANTIN TOROPIN Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — Facing an expected impeachment resolution in Congress, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said he’s eager to litigate the policy choices that he and President Donald Trump have made in Iran and Venezuela.
“If you want to take issue with what we did in Epic Fury or Rough Rider or nabbing Nicolás Maduro, you’re taking issue with the troops and what they accomplished, which is historic,” Hegseth told reporters Monday.
He also announced that he would hold a press conference on Tuesday — his first in over 180 days — on the looming impeachment threat.
Republican Rep. Thomas Massie has pushed the impeachment resolution forward over the objections of House GOP leadership as momentum grows to hold Hegseth accountable for the Iran war, which many Republicans blame for the party’s midterm election wipeout.
Hegseth argued that starting the war with Iran was a “bold move” by Trump “and as the president points out so clearly — you can’t let crazy Islamists have a nuclear bomb.”
“The choice was don’t act and wish it away or take a bold move, which the president did with Midnight Hammer, which we’ve done with Epic Fury,” Hegseth said, referring to the code names for the strike on Iranian nuclear facilities and the larger war.
Hegseth’s public defense of the war comes after voters last week overwhelmingly showed the unpopularity of the conflict. According to The AP Voter Poll, a survey of more than 100,000 voters in the United States, about 6 in 10 said the U.S. made the “wrong decision” in taking military action against Iran, though the survey suggested the Iran war was not the top issue for most voters. Only about one-third of voters said the war in Iran was “crucial” to shaping how they voted for Congress. That was well below the roughly half who said that about the cost of living or government corruption.