Senator Elizabeth Warren went on a deranged tirade during a tense hearing while questioning Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, ripping into the secretary and President Trump for deploying the Marines in response to the violent anti-ICE riots in Los Angeles — but her rant backfired when Hegseth brought the receipts and called out the Democrats for their blatant hypocrisy.
For context, during a Senate hearing on June 18, 2025, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) took the opportunity to rip into Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, along with the Trump Administration as a whole, while the secretary was testifying. However, Hegseth used Sen. Warren’s questioning as an opportunity to showcase the Democrats’ failures.
During the hearing, Sen. Warren first focused on the Trump Administration’s decision to deploy the Marines in Los Angeles, asking, “Secretary Hegseth, if the President wanted to deploy Marines to Chicago and New York City like he did in Los Angeles, would you carry out that order, even if the local governors and mayors objected?”
In response, the defense secretary argued that California Governor Gavin Newsom “was unwilling to address protecting federal law enforcement agents in Los Angeles,” which meant that “all the authorities in the Defense Department happily supported defending our ICE agents in the conduct of their job.” The secretary continued, “They have the right as Americans to be able to do their job without being attacked by mobs.”
Next, the senator doubled down, asking Secretary Hegseth, “How about if the President says he wants to send troops to 15 cities? Would you be willing to do that?” Holding his ground, the secretary replied, “Senator, I don’t accept your hypothetical because it’s…not a real one.” After the senator repeated her question, the secretary replied, “Senator, it’s a complete hypothetical, lacking any context at all. And I refuse to box myself in based on questioning, on a hypothetical.”
At this point, Secretary Hegseth brought down the hammer, saying, “The previous administration abandoned and allowed 21 million illegals to enter our country. So defending our homeland is a real, serious priority under this administration, and we’re doing it.” However, predictably, the senator was unsatisfied with this response, saying flatly, “Understand the question about defense.”
The back-and-forth continued as Sen. Warren continued to ask the same question, and the defense secretary defended his decisions while keeping his cool. However, when Sen. Warren refused to let up, the secretary shot back, “Senator, we’ve spent two decades guarding other people’s borders. We think at the Defense Department, it’s about time we shore up ours.”
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Then, once again, the senator asked the same question: “How many troops can you deploy domestically before you start to cut into our readiness internationally?” The secretary called out the hypocrisy of the question — and the senator’s party — by replying, “Previous administrations deployed our national guard all around the globe in numbers far beyond what we were capable of supporting.”
Watch the exchange:
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video