Fox News’ liberal voice Jessica Tarlov condemned Democratic leadership on Thursday after 11 Democratic lawmakers failed to show up to vote for Rep. Thomas Massie’s (R-Ky.) reintroduced impeachment articles against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
“This is embarrassing and bad, and should not have happened,” Tarlov told her “Raging Moderate” co-host Scott Galloway on Thursday. “And Democratic leadership has not had a good enough answer as to how this was allowed to happen.”
House Republicans blocked Massie’s impeachment articles on Tuesday in a 211-204 vote. The outgoing congressman’s impeachment articles accused Hegseth of a number of violations, such as conducting the Iran war without congressional authorization.
While some absent Democrats offered explanations, including a traffic jam, members of their own party still blasted them for missing the key vote.
“I felt like everything was turning up blue. Like I just got spoiled by all the momentum we had. And I thought, OK, occasionally you have to take an L. I feel as if yesterday was the first L we took when I found out that we didn’t have the votes, potentially because of some people who missed the vote,” Galloway said.
Tarlov said it would have been more acceptable for Democratic leadership to say their work begins in January when the party holds the majority in Congress.
“But when you have Democratic social media accounts saying things like ‘impeach Hegseth now,’ and then your members, or just some of them, can’t get back from a cocktail party, it is a bad look,” Tarlov said.
While Tarvlow doubts that this week’s effort would have gone far, criticizing Massie’s articles as being “far too broad,” she told Galloway Democrats will be more successful tackling similar issues “piece by piece” come January.
“So that’s in general my take, and I agree with you that it doesn’t feel, after you have this blue tsunami and that big promises are made about action and also accountability, that you flub something like this,” Tarlov said.