On July 21, 2026, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and General Dan Caine appeared before Congress to explain why Donald Trump and his team wanted an extra $67 billion to keep fighting Iran.The hearing lasted about three hours, and some members of Congress questioned them closely.Videos of the hearing were posted online, and one particular clip became very popular on X (formerly Twitter).In this clip, Hegseth refused to take responsibility for his and his department’s actions.Instead, he blamed the Biden administration, saying they had messed up when they were in charge.
During the hearing, Senator Jack Reed asked Hegseth if he knew that if the US attacked Iran, Iran might close the Strait of Hormuz as a response.
Hegseth said yes.But before Reed could finish explaining why that was important, Hegseth interrupted him.
An Arizona Senator wants to impeach Hegseth and is working to make that happen.
After cutting off Senator Reed, Hegseth claimed that under the Biden administration, US ships had given in to Iranian forces, which he said was different from how things worked under Trump.
This time, Reed stopped him and told him to answer the question instead of going off on a tangent.Reed said, “We’re talking about the war you started.Not a time when everything was calm and there were no losses.So your excuse about the Biden administration is just a clear way of hiding what I think is serious negligence.”
HEGSETH: We had US boats that surrendered to Iranian ships during the Biden administration–
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 21, 2026
REED: Listen — we're talking about the war you started. Not a situation in which oil was flowing freely, there was no conflict, we weren't losing personnel. So your fallback to the… pic.twitter.com/o08lXFBVyO
After learning that Hegseth’s department had considered closing the Strait of Hormuz as a possible Iranian response to a US attack, Reed accused him of not informing President Trump about this.
Reed also said Hegseth didn’t tell Trump about the possible consequences of closing the Strait of Hormuz, like higher oil prices and the risk that Iran could still attack the US.To support his point, Reed mentioned that Iran had killed some American soldiers “last weekend.”
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