KNIVES OUT

Top Dem Unleashes on House Members Who Botched Hegseth Vote

A Democratic rep says Pete Hegseth is inflicting “generational damage” on the armed forces. Yet his own party failed to advance his impeachment this week.

A House Democrat is calling out his colleagues for failing to show up to vote on impeaching Pete Hegseth.

Colorado Rep. Jason Crow, a former Army Ranger who deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, says Hegseth should be brought to trial and that the Democrats who missed a critical vote on Tuesday let the entire caucus down—something they are being scolded for behind the scenes.

“You need to show up. You can’t let this happen again. I mean that there is nothing else to say, right?” Crow tells the Daily Beast Podcast, referring to the group who missed the vote. “I think they’ve received that message, right? That people are pretty upset in the caucus. They should be, and people are expressing that to them.”

The House narrowly voted to kill an impeachment resolution Tuesday after 11 Democrats bizarrely missed the vote, with many blaming traffic after leaving a private event a mile and a half down the road.

However, with Democrats set to take both chambers in less than two months, Hegseth is not out of the woods—as long as Democrats do their jobs.

Hegseth should face consequences for his actions even if Donald Trump fires him because his tenure has been marked by “generational damage,” Crow said.

“I’m going to continue my oversight and accountability of Pete Hegseth, and I’m firmly of the belief that unless Donald Trump fires him, and maybe even if Donald Trump fires him, we still go forward with an impeachment and try to take him to trial,” Crow said. “We probably should.”

EXCUSES EXCUSES

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“Every single day that Pete Hegseth is sitting atop his perch in the Pentagon is a day where our military culture changes while he does generational damage to our most venerated institution and our service members,” Crow told host Joanna Coles, the same day Hegseth and those he was with were reprimanded by an Army sentinel for making noise at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery.

“This is actually the most important point,” Crow explained. “Our service members are at risk when he is there because he is a failed leader; he’s incompetent, he’s corrupt, and we have service members around the globe, hundreds of thousands deployed around the globe, some of whom are in combat operations today as we’re sitting here talking, that don’t have the leadership and the support and the competency from Hegseth and his team that they deserve.”

Any future impeachment effort, Crow explained, “has nothing to do with my personal dislike or disdain for the man, which is very high, by the way.” He said Hegseth is “a grotesque individual by every way I’m looking at it.”

“This has everything to do with what I talked about just a minute ago,” he continued. “We have these men and women in uniform across the country. These are our sons and daughters and brothers and sisters and moms and dads who have stepped up to serve and they don’t have competent leadership at the top. And, even worse than that, Pete Hagseth is trying to change the face of the military into some, you know, white nationalist perverted version of what he wants that institution to be.”

Crow said he has spoken with many Republican colleagues who don’t like Hegseth but can’t bring themselves to say so publicly.

“They come to me, and they say, ‘Yeah, he’s horrible, and he does crazy things, and I wish he would stop doing it’—to which I say, ‘Stop. I don’t want to hear it,’” Crow said. “I just don’t care to hear it anymore, because I’ve spent the last two years listening to many of them complain about Donald Trump, complain about Stephen Miller, complain about, you know, all the horrible things that have happened, and then they get up there in front of the cameras and say something different and tow a party line. It’s insulting at this point that they say one thing in private and then they go off and do another thing publicly.”

Crow is encouraging these Republicans to just say out loud how they feel about Hegseth.

“It’s just not leadership, right? I’m not here for their therapy anymore,” Crow said. “They’ve got to go to the cameras. They’ve got to say it in public. That is not my role, and I’m not going to listen to it anymore.”

The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Beast.

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