Knives are out for Secretary of War Pete Hegseth; the Democrats hate him, Thomas Massie is trying to impeach him, and lefties want him charged with war crimes. 

Trump has said nice things about Hegseth, but he often does before he fires somebody, so that tells you nothing. 

Not so when Secretary of State Rubio, who is the most respected member of the cabinet, backs you up. That means something. 

Massie, for all his standing on principle, is really not the guy to be leading the charge if he wants to be remembered at the One Principled Republican™ as he most certainly does. 

I can't mind-read, but I can read the news, and the optics of Massie leading the charge even before Democrats get their knives out are not particularly good, but then again, Massie is on his way out and may just want his revenge. Voting for Hegseth's impeachment would have solidified, or at least been explained by his Principled™ decision; filing the articles looks revenge-like. But maybe that's just me. 

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Massie's argument applies equally to Trump because he says Hegseth followed "illegal orders," which goes even farther than Elissa Slotkin's sly implication that Trump may have done so. When asked after her Seditious Six video, she declined to specify any illegal orders Trump gave. Massie flat-out says that Trump gave them. That's inviting impeachment of Trump as well as Hegseth. 

Not just that. But the impeachment articles are about executing "unlawful orders." 

But who issued these unlawful orders in the first place?

President Trump. 

Why would Senate Republicans vote to remove Hegseth from office, but somehow not President Trump? It doesn't make sense. 

Not only that, but even establishing a precedent for punishing "unlawful orders" is going to cause mass confusion inside the military and cause security defections.

I can't say whether Rubio has dug this far into the issue, and I presume he hasn't. He has a lot of other things on his plate, and closely watching the political machinations of Thomas Massie shouldn't be high on his to-do list. 

But the same can't be said of the people who are out for blood — Hegseth's and Trump's. When this vote takes place, as it almost certainly will, it will mark a point on the issue of impeaching Trump. A vote for this impeachment resolution is a vote to say Trump gave illegal orders. 

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced he will hold a press conference at the Pentagon Tuesday morning to address the House push to impeach him.

It will be Hegseth's first press conference since May 5.

The announcement came after remarks at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, where Hegseth dismissed concerns about impeachment and defended President Trump's handling of the Iran war.

Here's what to know ahead of Tuesday's press conference: https://foxnews.com/live-news/trump-says-he-s-unlikely-to-escalate-iran-conflict-amid-talks-responds-to-vance-assessment

I didn't read Rubio's comments as pro forma; they sounded sincere to me, and why not? Hegseth's opposition seems more offended by his driving woke out of the military than anything else, although, no doubt, the Military-Industrial complex would like a more predictable and compliant Secretary of War. Hegseth is upending a lot of the "way things are done here" norms that benefit the incumbent powers that be. 

I am not "in the know" about the Pentagon's internal politics or the thinking of the big defense contractors, but institutions in general hate changes that upend how things are done and how resources are distributed. Hegseth doesn't fit that mold. 

And, from what I can see, the problems with the Iran war aren't primarily driven by military decisions or execution, although we have no after-action report to pore over to decide what went right and what went wrong. I think that tactically, the war has been run very competently. 

From my point of view, the political strategy went awry, and if so, it isn't Hegseth's fault. Like his style or not, he's done exactly what he was put there to do.