Rep. Massie files resolution to impeach Hegseth

Welcome back to Fox Little San Francisco. I'm Greg Lee. Good to be with you. Top of the one o'clock hour here. We've been listening to Republican Representative Thomas Massie after he introduced articles of impeachment against Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth this morning. This is Congress reconvened for the first time since Democrats won back control of the House and the Senate in the 120th Congress, which will begin on January 3rd. We want to speak more about this with a political expert, Professor Melissa Michelson from Menlo College. Professor, always good to see you. Thanks for being with us. Let me just begin with that, with Thomas Massie introducing those articles of impeachment. Democrats seem so far like they're in line with it. Republicans on the other side seem like they've been looking for someone to blame for these election losses. Vice President J.D. Vance saying it was because of the war in Iran. So do you think this has a chance of passing and we see Pete Hegseth impeached? It's possible, right? Republicans might be looking for a way to show the American people that they hear their complaints about the war and maybe they can pin that on Hegseth and not get in trouble with President Trump for opposing him with the war. But it's also possible that given that Hegseth is. So far, still in the president's good graces, that they don't want to impeach him because they don't want to go up against their president. And so it kind of remains to be seen how much leeway Republicans feel they have with the president to publicly oppose him and oppose his war, even if it's focused on the secretary of war and not on the president. So it's an open question. Yeah, Melissa, on that note, this is a packed lame duck session, five weeks before the new Congress takes place. But there's a lot on the table. Government funding runs out on December 11th. How contentious will that conversation and the NDAA funding be with this Congress as Republicans have their last bit of control here for the next couple of weeks? I think it's going to be super contentious because Democrats are fired up. They see this as an opportunity to show voters that the faith that was put into them in this blue wave was not. A bad choice that they are going to fight for the public and fight to do something about affordability and corruption. So I think there's going to be a big fight about this if for no other reason than to show the American people that they were listening. And so everybody is going to be ready to respond in a way to these election results. And this is a great opportunity to do so. Melissa, speaking of those election results, the first night of the election we heard President Trump taking sort of a conciliatory tone, but in a truth social message this morning he says, does anybody really believe that this election was honest? How could the polls be so wrong? Some early voting dumps were so large that it was impossible to win no matter how many people went to vote. So going back to some of that rhetoric about a so-called called rigged election without evidence, but indeed the polls beforehand Showed that Democrats were going to do this, that they were likely going to overtake the House and maybe the Senate, and they did both in historic fashion. What do you think the president's trying to do right now? Well, I think the president's in his feelings. You know, we've seen coverage now for the last almost week talking about how this was very much a repudiation of the president that, yeah, OK, his name wasn't on the ballot, but this is the voters saying they did not like what Trump was doing. And I I think that's hurtful to the president. And so he's denying it. Right. There's those five stages of grief. And apparently he's in denial now. And. You know, that's not psychologically surprising, but it is disappointing because, as you know, this is, in fact, a result that's consistent with the polls. There's no evidence of cheating. There's no evidence that anything funny happened with the election results. This was nothing more than the voters saying, we do not like what the president is doing and we're going to vote for some Democrats. So. You know, it's unfortunate that he's doing this because sowing doubt on election results just causes problems and makes our democracy a little bit weaker and sometimes even makes things more dangerous for election workers. But there's no there's nothing to it there. This is a clean election. And this was a sweep that was the public saying they don't like Trump. Yeah. Melissa, you talked about the direction that the Republican Party may go as it pertains to. This impeachment vote against Pete Hegseth, I think there are some bigger questions within the Republican Party about which direction they go. Mike Johnson said he will not run for leadership in the minority, and that'll be between Mike Jordan and Steve Scalise so far. But what is the hard question that this party is now asking? Because a lot of voters are saying MAGA-ism is dead, as it were. So is it this sort of binary choice between President Trump and a new direction for the Republican Party? Yeah, I think the Republican Party really has to figure out where it's going next. You know, if the party has been defined for the past decade by being the party of Trump and the party of MAGA, and now you're seeing the public saying, no, we don't want that. Well, then how does the Republican Party go on to win any more elections? How does it go on to win in 2028? Does it double down on Trump's policies and MAGA policies or does it swerve in a new direction and try to get the public back? And so the Republican Party is going to have to do some real hard looks inside, you know, do some analyses and figure out where they're going. Similar to how they were looking inside after the 2012. Loss to Obama, you know, they did a big report and then they decided what they were going to do about it. Trump kind of threw out through all that, threw a wrench into all of that. But here's yet another chance now for the Republican Party to decide what do we stand for going forward? And do we want to double down on these Trump policies? Or is there something else that we think would be a better fit for our core principles and something that would resonate with the public? And Melissa, we should say, despite their sweeping wins in this midterm, the Democratic Party is also now having sort of a inflection or reflection moment, as it were. You have this new wave of Democratic senators that are coming in, a handful of progressives. And there's a push to say that Chuck Schumer should not be the leader of the Democratic Party in the upper chamber. There's even some of those questions about Hakeem Jeffries in the House as we sort of see this battle between progressive versus moderate Democrats. What do you make of what we're seeing? Yeah, and this is also something that's been going on in the Democratic Party for some time, right? To what extent is this a party of the older, maybe more moderate Democrats, and to what degree is this a party of more Democratic Socialists or more progressive-leaning Democrats? Who's going to be the face of the party, and what are the priorities of the party going to be? I think actually probably Schumer and Jeffries will hold on to their leadership positions, but that we're having these debates in public just shows how much even within the Democratic Party, they're not quite sure which direction they're going. And that tends to be a much harder problem for the party that's not in power, because for the party in power, that's the president. But right now for the Democrats, there's no one single person that you can point to as that's the leader of the Democratic Party. And so there's... Also on the Democratic side, going to be all of this introspection after the election. What did this really mean? What is the public telling us? What's our best route forward to not only govern effectively in the next two years, but how do we win in 2028? So we'll continue to see a lot of conversations about that in the next couple of weeks and months as we get ready for that. 2027 Congress. Yeah, a lot to talk about. Professor, I do want to ask you before we go, despite President Trump's Truth Social about the election today, I don't know if you saw his 60 minutes interview last night in which he suggested that perhaps the immigration tactics and the crackdown of his administration may have been, quote, too much and perhaps may have led to some of his losses. That is perhaps the most contrite we have seen the president in regards to the immigration policies, but at the same time of elevating Stephen Miller to his chief of staff who has been the architect of much of that. So what do you make of the parallels between what we're hearing and what we're seeing from the president? Yeah, it's hard to figure out exactly what's going on with him, right? We can only look at what he's doing, and we're getting these very conflicting messages. Do you actually believe that your harsh immigration policies led you to lose, which is a lot of what the data is telling us, right, especially in Texas, that a lot of that blue wave in Texas was because of Latinos who felt betrayed. By the president that they voted for, but then to elevate Stephen Miller is saying, but I still believe in those policies. And so it's hard to know what exactly is Trump thinking and what kind of messages he trying to send. You can't both. Think that your immigration policies were a mistake because they led to losses, but then double down. I mean, you can, that's what he's doing, but he's, he's doing these conflicting things. Um, and it's not really sure why it's not really clear why. So I don't know. I don't I don't know what's going on. But I think a lot of Latinos showed us how they feel about Trump's immigration policies when they came out in such big numbers against him, especially in Texas, and wiped out all of those redrawn districts in Texas that were supposed to help the Republicans hold on to some House seats, and they just got swept away by the blue wave. I don't know what's going on. Yeah, so much of that coalition that the president seemed to gather in 2024, including Latino voters and men, and so much of that has dissipated here in 2026, just two years later, certainly on issues of immigration and the economy. Professor Melissa Michelson, really appreciate you taking the time to provide your insight on an important conversation as we continue to watch this new Congress start to take shape. We appreciate the time. All right, thanks Craig. Thanks so much. All right, let's take a quick break here on Fox Local San Francisco. We will be back in two minutes. Stay with us.