Derrick Van Orden, the Republican who represents western Wisconsin in Congress, stood outside the U.S. Capitol last Wednesday and told a reporter he was ready to hit somebody.

"I will f****** punch someone in the face for talking about Hegseth," he said, on tape, to reporter Matt Laslo.

Nobody had threatened anyone. The question was about Congress doing its job: whether members of Van Orden's own party wanted to stand up for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, after one of them filed articles of impeachment against him.

What he was asked about

That week, Kentucky Republican Thomas Massie filed articles of impeachment against Hegseth. Raw Story reported that they accuse him of "murder" over the Pentagon's killings of people on boats in the Caribbean, of unlawfully ordering special forces into Venezuela to seize its president, and of running an illegal war in Iran.

Those are serious charges, and they come from a Republican. Impeachment is the tool the Constitution gives Congress for exactly this kind of question. A member who thinks the charges are wrong can argue that, and vote no.

Van Orden didn't make that argument. When Laslo asked whether a lot of Republicans wanted to stand up for Hegseth, he answered:

"Yeah. I will f****** punch someone in the face for talking about Hegseth. He just changed the culture of the Department of War to focus on war."

According to Laslo's Raw Story account, he also said: "If these morons are talking s--- about Pete, you know, they're barking up the wrong tree." He said Massie "has lost the bubble" and "has done more damage to the Republican Party than any Democrat in Congress."

The vote never happened anyway

Van Orden didn't have to punch anyone to protect Hegseth. His party's leaders made sure the House never voted.

Massie filed his resolution in a way that forced the House to act within two legislative days. Speaker Mike Johnson then sent the House home early, and the Thursday session when a vote could have been forced was canceled. We laid out how that happened, and how it fits a pattern of Johnson canceling workdays whenever a vote might rebuke Trump.

So the members who are supposed to oversee the Pentagon went home before the election without voting on whether its chief broke the law. Van Orden spent the moment threatening violence against anyone who brought it up. The boat strikes at the center of Massie's charges have killed 227 people in a year, and Senate Republicans have voted against even debating an end to them.

Then he went after a former teacher

When Rachel La Due, a Wisconsin Democratic Party spokesperson who used to teach middle school, shared Laslo's video on X, Van Orden answered her at 4:35 in the morning on September 18, Raw Story reported.

He didn't walk back the threat. He posted a screenshot of her X bio, pointing to her past job as a teacher and her follower count, above two words: "Winning. Not."

A sitting congressman who had just talked about punching people spent the early morning mocking a former schoolteacher for sharing his own words.

This isn't new for him

Van Orden has a long record of losing his temper at people with far less power than he has:

• In 2021, before he was elected, he went to the public library in Prairie du Chien and confronted staff over a Pride Month book display in the children's section. A library worker said he was angry and loud.
• In July 2023, he yelled profanities at teenage Senate pages who were photographing the Capitol Rotunda, a tradition in their last week of service. He refused to apologize, and the leaders of both parties in the Senate rebuked him from the Senate floor.
• This month, he said Black voters "don't want to vote for a homosexual", and in August he was caught posting AI-generated fake videos of his opponent without the label Wisconsin law requires.

The bottom line

Asked whether Republicans would defend Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth against impeachment charges filed by a fellow Republican, Derrick Van Orden said he would "punch someone in the face for talking about Hegseth" and called critics "morons." Two days later, at 4:35 a.m., he mocked a former middle school teacher who had shared the video. He did it the same week his party's Speaker sent the House home before the election, canceling the session when a vote on those charges could have been forced.

Source

This post is based on Matt Laslo's reporting for Raw Story and Ask a Pol, and on Raw Story's follow-up by Kathleen Culliton. Photo: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters, via Raw Story.