10/10/2026
Steve Bannon, the longtime Trump strategist and host of the War Room podcast, has told his audience that he expects Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to face impeachment efforts early in a future Democratic-controlled Congress, with the push eventually reaching other members of the administration and, Bannon has suggested, President Trump himself.
The remarks arrive as impeachment pressure on Hegseth has already become a live issue in Washington. Kentucky Republican Representative Thomas Massie forced the issue in September 2026 by introducing eight articles of impeachment against Hegseth on the House floor, accusing him of waging the Iran war without congressional authorization and of what Massie called the kidnapping of a foreign leader in a Venezuela operation. House Speaker Mike Johnson subsequently sent members home for an early recess, a move Massie and other lawmakers said was intended to delay a vote Republican leadership feared could pass. The Pentagon has rejected the underlying criticism, with press secretary Kingsley Wilson calling Hegseth a transformative leader for the department.
Separate Democratic-led impeachment articles against Hegseth, introduced by Representative Sahar Ansari and cosponsored by lawmakers including Steve Cohen, Jasmine Crockett and Sarah McBride, accuse him of war crimes tied to the Iran conflict and of obstructing congressional oversight, though they have no path forward in the current GOP-controlled chamber.
No defense secretary in U.S. history has been impeached, and any House vote to remove Hegseth or Kennedy would still require a two-thirds conviction vote in the Senate, a threshold that has made most recent Cabinet impeachment pushes effectively symbolic. Bannon’s comments nonetheless reflect a widely held expectation in Washington that a change in House control after the midterms would make impeachment proceedings against Trump administration officials far more likely than they are today.
