US House of Representatives blocks attempt to impeach Defense Secretary Peter Hegseth, Trump hails 'a great patriot'

American deputies voted Tuesday to send back to committee a resolution aimed at indicting Defense Minister Pete Hegseth before Congress, in effect torpedoing this procedure which could have resulted in his dismissal. The resolution on this “impeachment” of Pete Hegseth will therefore not be put to a vote this week, as the Democrats and the Republican deputy who submitted it hoped. After their victory in the midterm elections, however, the Democrats could resurrect it in January, when they regain the majority in Congress.

Donald Trump welcomed this failure on Tuesday. The procedure “failed miserably,” the American president said on his Truth Social platform, hailing his Defense Minister as a “great patriot.”

The American Minister of Defense Pete Hegseth, for his part, on Tuesday described as “political staging” the impeachment procedure initiated by a deputy against him for, among other things, his management of the war against Iran. “What a defeated and embittered MP is trying to do is not oversight or accountability. It is a political staging, a personal manifesto dictated by ego and resentment,” he declared to journalists. “It’s a farce and a media stunt.”