Republican Representative Thomas Massie puts Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth under pressure in a tense exchange, raising pointed questions around the remark, “Nobody’s coming to the rescue.” The confrontation highlights the sharp questioning and scrutiny Hegseth faces during the hearing.
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00:00I'm the one who most wants to be here those two weeks.
00:03And they got canceled.
00:05And I said they would probably cancel them.
00:08And we were told, oh, no, that's a ludicrous idea.
00:12Let me tell you how stupid Thomas Massey's comment is, those were the words of the Speaker.
00:1748 hours later, what did he do?
00:20Exactly what I predicted.
00:22He cut two weeks off of this calendar.
00:25So, why did he just cut another day off the calendar?
00:30He had some more choice words for me, because I predicted this as well.
00:35On Tuesday, as a fully participating member of Congress, I introduced eight articles of
00:44impeachment against Peter Brian Hegseth.
00:49Over there, they're leading a little fantasy, they call it the Department of War.
00:53You know, you can't rename things without Congress.
00:56Hell, you can't even rename a post office without us.
00:59You think you can rename the Department of Defense, the Department of War?
01:02Give me a break.
01:03But enjoy your little fantasy.
01:06It's the Department of Defense.
01:10Here's what's, and let me tell you about the eight articles of impeachment.
01:13By the way, Speaker Johnson says I'm not a fully participating member of Congress.
01:18Well, it took a long time to write eight articles of impeachment.
01:23It didn't take much time to conceive them.
01:26If you're looking over at the administrative branch and trying to give an award for the
01:29person who's racked up the most illegal and unconstitutional act, there's one clear winner.
01:35It's Peter Brian Hegseth, Secretary of Defense, who has done that.
01:42So, it was easy to conceive of these articles of impeachment, but it wasn't easy to write
01:46them.
01:47They are watertight.
01:49They are watertight.
01:51In the 24 hours that has transpired since I was right here at this podium for an hour
01:56and 20 minutes reading the articles of impeachment, what has happened is, have they attacked the
02:01language of these articles that they said there's no legal basis for this?
02:05You can't possibly think these are valid articles of impeachment.
02:09No.
02:11Nobody's attacked the substance.
02:12And nobody has come to the rescue of the Secretary of Defense.
02:19I don't even see the online brigade of paid media grifters who typically rally for MAGA and
02:26the President while they're collecting their checks.
02:31I just don't see it happening.
02:33And that's interesting.
02:36And so, what is the form of a privileged, when you introduce articles of impeachment as
02:42a privileged resolution, what happens?
02:45Well, the Speaker has 48 hours to schedule a vote.
02:4948 hours would be tomorrow, would be that vote.
02:53Well, what happened?
02:55We just found out, not more than an hour ago, that the leadership of this body, which is
03:02Republican, I'm having a hard time figuring this out too.
03:06Why?
03:07We are the majority.
03:08We may only be the majority for six more weeks.
03:11Why would we be canceling days when the country is burning, the inflation is rampant?
03:19There are things we could do here.
03:20Why would we cancel our own majority?
03:24I can't figure that out.
03:26But I did figure out why we canceled tomorrow.
03:29And that's what I'm explaining to you as a fully participating member of Congress.
03:37Tomorrow would be the vote on impeaching Secretary of Defense Peter Brian Hegseth.
03:44And it looks like that vote's not going to happen.
03:47It would be a real easy vote.
03:49It would probably be a vote to table to insulate the members of this body from any accountability.
03:54That would avoid you from having to debate the issue, any of the eight articles of impeachment.
04:01It would let you go home to your town halls and say, well, we didn't vote on the substance
04:05of the bill.
04:06I didn't really agree with Massey's thing or disagree with it.
04:10I just thought we should table it and it should go to a committee first.
04:12Maybe we'll refer it to a committee or a blue ribbon commission or a panel of experts,
04:17because we're just mere congressmen.
04:18We're not equipped to stand here on the floor and debate without reading our speeches that
04:25were written by our staff.
04:28Would a fully participating or not fully participating member of Congress come down here and speak
04:34extemporaneously for an hour?
04:36I don't think that would be a, I think that's the indicator if somebody does that, they are
04:42participating.
04:43Maybe when you hear their speeches, they're sincere.
04:47I will not, but I encourage you to claim an hour yourself.
04:51Surely you could do the same thing.
04:53And I would love to hear what the gentleman has to say.
04:58You know, it used to be considered, I think it was against the rules at one time, to read
05:03your speeches in this body.
05:05Why is that?
05:07Because it was considered insincere.
05:09If you didn't have the conviction of heart to come down here or the presence of mind,
05:14we've got a few senators that may not have the presence of mind.
05:18I mean, we've got some that don't have the conviction of heart.
05:20But if you just always came down here and read your speeches, some of them are written by AI
05:25now.
05:26The staff better watch out.
05:28It was a good gig while you had it, writing the speech for your robot boss to come down
05:32here and burp, burp, burp, here is my speech.
05:36Well, now they've got a robot to replace you to feed your robot a speech.
05:42This is not a robot speech, folks.
05:44I am not a robot congressman.
05:46Never have been.
05:47I am a, contrary to what the speaker said, a fully participating member of Congress.
05:53Let me talk about some of the things that I've done since I've been in Congress.
05:58In 2014, working with Jared Polis, again, here, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, wait, wait, that's
06:04a dirty word.
06:04Across the aisle?
06:05You shouldn't be working across the aisle, Congressman Massey.
06:08Don't do that.
06:10We've got to have a bunch of fake bills that go down party lines that we can use against
06:14the other party in this next election.
06:16We don't want anything, and whatever you do, don't co-sponsor some Democrats bill.
06:21You're just giving credence to the other side, to the other viewpoint.
06:25Well, I ignored that, and I worked with Earl Blumenauer and Jared Polis, and we got the
06:32hemp bill in the farm bill.
06:35And I'm not afraid to tell you, I did a little R&D to come up with that hemp bill.
06:40I ripped off and duplicated it.
06:42That's what R&D stands for.
06:43I ripped off and duplicated that bill from Ron Paul, and it became a law, and it created
06:48an entire industry.
06:50It was just a little thing in the farm bill.
06:52Just a little pilot program that grew into an industry that helped my state, Kentucky,
06:57created an industry that's at least a billion dollars in Kentucky.
07:00Well, now they're trying to destroy it, but that's for another day.
07:06What am I doing now, too?
07:07Right now, that was in 2014.
07:09Have you heard about this beef product, ground beef product, that's going to come from a
07:15foreign country at 75% of market price?
07:18How do you get something at 75% of market price?
07:21Well, I can tell you what, it ain't grade A prime if it's 75% of market price.
07:26Somebody else didn't want to buy it.
07:28And that's what they're talking about bringing 300,000 metric tons.
07:33They tell you in tons, so you don't realize that's 600 million pounds.
07:36That's a billion, that's two billion quarter pounders, folks.
07:42That's how much they're going to bring here to this country.
07:45Is that going to help farmers?
07:47No, it's not going to help farmers.
07:48It was never intended to help farmers.
07:50It's not even going to help consumers.
07:52Because what it's going to do is it's going to run more farmers out of business in this
07:55country.
07:56And when we run out of the 300 metric boatloads or whatever it is of ground beef product, they
08:02won't have our own farmers here.
08:04They won't survive through these manipulations of the market.
08:08Well, the solution has been here all along since 2015.
08:12As a fully participating member of Congress, I introduced the Prime Act.
08:17By the way, this is back in 2015, what else happened?
08:21This body got rid of country of origin labeling for beef and pork.
08:25How did that help American farmers?
08:28You can't even go to the grocery store and know if it's American or where in the world
08:32it came from, where they have different laws that govern food safety.
08:36Oh, but it says, USDA, well, that must be USA.
08:41No, that is not USA beef.
08:45So what was my solution?
08:47It's called the Prime Act.
08:48I say it's my solution, but I've got to give credit to Shelley Pingree across the aisle.
08:53Oh man, there's that dirty word again, across the aisle, working with Democrats on a bill
08:59that could help farmers and consumers.
09:01What does the Prime Act do?
09:02It says, you know what?
09:04If you're a small farmer and a small processor and you're not crossing state lines and you're
09:10raising your healthy beef right there in your own county and you want to sell it to a neighbor
09:14in your own county, your own state, you can use a local processor.
09:18And as long as the state or county health inspector is watching that process, you don't
09:24need the federal government there.
09:25You don't need a million dollars of regulation at a company that has 10 employees.
09:32They cut up more meat at the steakhouse down the street in a day than most of these processors
09:38cut up in a week.
09:40They don't have a USDA inspector.
09:42You don't need a USDA inspector.
09:44You just need local inspection, like free restaurants.
09:46So that's the bill that Shelley Pingree and I came up with.
09:49As fully participating members of Congress in 2015, in response to the repeal of the country
09:55of origin labeling, which I voted against the repeal, by the way, your cell phone's labeled,
10:00your suit's labeled, your shoes are labeled, your car's labeled.
10:05Everything's labeled with country of origin except for beef and pork.
10:09Why is that?
10:10Because there's some greedy corporations that convinced the World Trade Organization and
10:16this body to get rid of those labels so they could sell you foreign food and make you think
10:22it was USDA because it has USDA label on it.
10:25Where is the Prime Act right now?
10:28Well Massey, that was a great idea, but you didn't do anything with it.
10:31Oh no!
10:31You all voted for it.
10:33It's in the Farm Bill.
10:36It's in the House Farm Bill.
10:37I worked hard across the aisle with the chairman of that committee, and he did town halls across
10:44the country and found out that this is what people want.
10:47And this would solve two problems, three problems.
10:50It would lower the price of food in the supermarket.
10:53It would make our farmers more successful.
10:55And the quality of what you eat would go up.
10:58That's what I've done as a fully participating member of Congress.
11:03You know what else I remember doing as a fully participating member of Congress?
11:07I stood at this microphone on the night the big budget-busting bill passed.
11:13Some people called it beautiful.
11:16I said if it happens after midnight, it ain't beautiful.
11:21I said from this podium we are not rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic for this country.
11:28We are putting coal in the boiler and setting a course for the iceberg.
11:34I said if you – look, I like to cut taxes.
11:37Two of my bills were in the big bill.
11:40No tax on tips and reducing tax for senior citizens on Social Security.
11:45Why not?
11:46Massey, why wouldn't you vote for that?
11:48Because I refuse to lie to my constituents.
11:52I refuse to lie to them.
11:53I'm not going to tell them that you can cut taxes and increase spending and the debt will
12:01go down.
12:02That's a lie.
12:04You could – no grade schooler who's done the least bit of math would believe it.
12:08But we – some of my colleagues stood here and told that lie.
12:13And I wasn't willing to tell it and I wasn't willing to vote for it.
12:17I said it would cause massive inflation.
12:18On that night, over a year ago, when I gave my speech, I said the bond market is also going
12:24to react poorly to this.
12:26Interest rates will go up because they see we are not serious about dealing with the debt.
12:31They see that one day we are going to default.
12:35And I called a spade a spade and I voted against the big beautiful bill.
12:38And I'm proud that I did because it's a terrible bill.
12:42And it's what's caused this inflation – part of what's caused this inflation.
12:47Let me tell you something else I've done here over the years.
12:51I worked with my colleague from California, Zoe Lofgren, on privacy.
12:55You know you're being spied on by our own country without a warrant in contravention
13:02of the U.S. Constitution?
13:04Zoe Lofgren and I got an amendment passed many years ago into the appropriations bill to ban
13:10that.
13:10Well, the Senate threw it in the trash.
13:12But we can't control what the Senate does.
13:15And that's one thing that I got done.
13:17I've been here as a fully participating member of Congress, the sole voice for inventors on
13:26the Judiciary Committee.
13:27I've introduced pro-patent legislation, pro-small business legislation.
13:34There's this misunderstanding.
13:36People think, oh, Apple, Google, Microsoft.
13:40They just use those inventions to keep the little guys from getting into their markets.
13:45No.
13:46Apple, Google, Microsoft.
13:47They're slow moving.
13:49They got employees there.
13:50I mean, they got some good ones, but a lot of them are just punching the clock.
13:53They've accumulated some weight, the fast, nimble companies, the people in their garages.
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