Can you smell the schadenfreude in the air?

Watching some of the worst people in the world get their comeuppance this week has been deeply satisfying. And the show isn’t over yet. While the midterms have wrapped up, the blame game is only just getting started, with Republicans desperate to find scapegoats for their shellacking.

He may be a big, strong, testosterone-obsessed warrior, but I suspect Pete Hegseth is panicking right now. When it comes to scapegoats, the defence secretary (or “war secretary” as he prefers to identify as) is an obvious choice. The disastrous US-Israeli war on Iran played a key role in the midterm upset, as even JD Vance has admitted, and Hegseth was one of its main architects.

The Democrats have already declared war on the former Fox News personality. “In the majority, one of the first things we’re going to do is run Pete Hegseth out of town,” Hakeem Jeffries announced at a campaign rally before the midterms.

It’s not just the Democrats; many of Hegseth’s peers are eager to give him the boot.

The outgoing Republican senator Thom Tillis told CBS News on Tuesday night that Hegseth has a “reckoning” coming. Meanwhile, the (also outgoing) Republican congressman Thomas Massie told Bloomberg News he will “definitely” reintroduce articles of impeachment against Hegseth next week. (Massie has already tried to impeach Hegseth for starting the war in Iran without congressional approval.)

In a Wednesday post on Twitter/X, Massie wrote: “There is one contingency in which I won’t reintroduce the articles of impeachment: Hegseth resigns.”

There is little chance that Hegseth will unilaterally decide to make a dignified exit. On Thursday, the defense secretary posted a longwinded video in which, after rambling about DEI and trans people, he asserted that he wasn’t going anywhere.

“A disgruntled, defeated congressman [aka Massie], along with all his Democrat allies, has also dropped sham articles of impeachment........

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