Hegseth calls his own impeachment a 'farce.' The senator who may convict him isn't so sure.

…(cont) September 15th. Representative Thomas Massie files eight articles of impeachment against the Secretary of Defense, over the war with Iran, over what he calls the boat bombings. I wrote the date down because it's the date, not because I thought it mattered yet.

October 26th. Massie says, on the record, that the Secretary is on borrowed time — he'll reintroduce the articles if the Secretary is still at the Pentagon after the midterms. I wrote that one down too.

November 5th. Massie gives the Secretary a choice, resign or face the vote. Same day the Secretary posts a video calling the articles "sham," from, in his words, "a disgruntled, defeated congressman." I've got that one circled. I don't remember circling it. But there it is, circled.

Today, the House actually holds the vote. Massie says he's open to splitting his eight articles so members can vote on each one on its own instead of up-or-down on the whole thing at once. The Secretary, same day, uses the word. The President says the Secretary's work at the Pentagon deserves an A-plus-plus-plus. I wrote the grade down exactly the way he said it, three pluses, because I didn't want to shortchange him on the pluses.

Here's my car for a second. It doesn't start on the first turn most mornings, so a neighbor looks under the hood for me because I've stopped trusting my own eyes on an engine. Two weeks ago the gauge on the dash said full, and the receipt from the gas station in my glovebox said I'd bought twelve gallons two days before that. Two pieces of paper, same tank. I didn't get to pick the one I liked better. I read both.

So I read both on this too. Senator Thom Tillis says, same week, that he's leaning toward voting to convict if the articles reach the Senate floor. Senator Joni Ernst asks, out loud, whether the Secretary is being truthful about how the war is actually going. And Nancy Lacore, a three-star admiral the Secretary fired last year, won a House seat in South Carolina last week and is joining the push for his impeachment.

I was closing the notebook. Excuse me — one more thing, before you go. Of those three — the senator asking if he's lying, the senator leaning toward convicting him, and the admiral he fired — which one of them called this whole thing a farce?