Pete Hegseth is a terrible defense secretary and he should never have been appointed or confirmed and his conduct has been awful and he should be ousted. But any impeachment by the House of Representatives still needs to go through regular order, meaning a committee hearing, a debate, a report, a vote. Not a rush to a floor vote, like was tried Tuesday.

Due process, which President Donald Trump has often ignored, is critical to the rule of law and a government based on the principles of fairness. And it still applies even for a cad and a lout like Hegseth, who yesterday was laughing and taking pictures at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery following a Veterans Day ceremony and had to be loudly yelled at by the honor guard soldier: “All visitors will maintain an atmosphere of silence and respect at all times.”

Trump should fire Hegseth and clean house at the Pentagon and find a suitable secretary of defense (not secretary of war, as the asinine Hegseth styles himself) who won’t be acting like a frat boy at the one of the most solemn sites in the nation.

The eight articles of impeachment were offered in a privileged resolution by Rep. Thomas Massie, an extreme isolationist who lost his Republican primary this year and leaves office on Jan. 3.

That date is exactly a year since the U.S. military swooped into Venezuela to seize Nicolás Maduro and it constitutes one of Massie’s articles of impeachment. Four others concern the Iran war and there are one each on the fighting in Yemen, the Pentagon sinking of suspected drug boats on the high seas and Hegseth’s harassment and intimidation of Sen. Mark Kelly, a retired Navy captain, who properly said that service members do not have to obey illegal orders.

Is the conduct of the Iran war an impeachable offense or a policy difference? Also, would it be more suitable for Trump as commander in chief than Hegseth? The attack on Kelly is a much clearer abuse of office by Hegseth. But does that rise to impeachment?

These questions should be addressed in the normal course of House business, via a committee. But even using a committee doesn’t necessarily make impeachment correct. The GOP House was wrong in 2024 when they impeached Alejandro Mayorkas, Joe Biden’s homeland security secretary.

And in 2015-2016 some hotheads in the Republican House wanted to impeach Barack Obama’s IRS commissioner, but the leadership wisely put a stop to it.

There are recriminations now among some House Democrats that several missed Tuesday’s roll call vote that tabled the Massie impeachment by sending it to a committee. Members should be less focused on which members missed a vote than on what they are actually doing.

Every Democrat who voted sided with Massie and every Republican who voted opposed Massie. The impeachment was tabled.

Hegseth is a bad guy and he should go, but a sketchy impeachment with little chance of a two-thirds Senate majority for a conviction is not what is going to get him out of office.

When the Democrats take control in January, they can choose to start a serious impeachment inquiry into Hegseth, but they also have a lot of other work to attend to.

_____

©2026 New York Daily News. Visit at nydailynews.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.