Trump rules out using military force to acquire Greenland in Davos speech

(WASHINGTON) — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Tuesday said the U.S. will end its war with Iran “on our timeline” and “at our choosing” amid mixed messaging from the administration on the timing of the operation and its ultimate objective.

Hegseth notably declined to give a further assessment on how much longer the military campaign will last, saying Tuesday would be the most intense day of strikes yet in the 11-day conflict and that it will be up to President Donald Trump to decide when the war is over.

“The president has set a very specific mission to accomplish, and our job is to unrelentingly deliver that,” Hegseth told reporters at a Pentagon press briefing.

“Now he gets to control the throttle. He’s the one deciding. He’s the one elected on behalf of the American people when we’re achieving those objectives. And so, it’s not for me to posit whether it’s the beginning, the middle or the end. That’s his. And he’ll continue to communicate that,” the defense secretary said.

Trump himself has made conflicting statements on the matter.

Trump told CBS News on Monday afternoon that the war is “very complete, pretty much.” But around that time, the Defense Department’s rapid response social media account posted on X: “We have Only Just Begun to Fight.”

ABC News White House Correspondent Selina Wang pressed Trump later Monday evening at a news conference: “So, which is it and how long should Americans be preparing for this war to last for?”

“Well, I think you can say both. The beginning — it’s the beginning of building a new country, but they certainly, they have no navy, they have no air force, they have no anti-aircraft equipment,” Trump said.

“We could call it a tremendous success right now. As we leave here, I could call it. Or we could go further and we’re going to go further,” the president added.

Trump said on Monday he thinks the war will be over “very soon” and repeatedly called the war a “short-term excursion.”

Trump and his top officials have outlined four objectives of the military offensive: destroy Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities; annihilate their Navy; ensure they can never obtain a nuclear weapon; and prevent the Iranian regime from arming and funding terrorism outside its borders. But broader goals on what comes after the fighting ends remains unclear.

Trump’s signaled he could declare the military campaign a success at any time, even as the Iranian regime remains in power and Iran still maintains its enriched uranium stockpile. Trump’s repeatedly said Iran cannot be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon — and over the weekend said he was not ruling out the possible use of U.S. ground troops in Iran, but said that they would be used only “for a very good reason.”

The president has also sent mixed messages on regime change, and how involved the U.S. intends to be in what new leadership will take control in Tehran.

Trump expressed disappointment in the selection of Mojtaba Khamenei, the 56-year-old son of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in a U.S.-Israeli strike at the beginning of the war.

In a phone interview with ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Mary Bruce on Sunday, Trump said the new leader is “going to have to get approval from us.”

“If he doesn’t get approval from us he’s not going to last long. We want to make sure that we don’t have to go back every 10 years, when you don’t have a president like me that’s not going to do it,” Trump told ABC.

Hegseth, though, on Tuesday vowed the U.S. would not be involved in “mission creep.”

“This is not endless. It’s not protracted,” Hegseth said.

“This is not 2003. This is not endless nation-building … Those days are dead. Instead, we’re winning decisively with brutal efficiency, total air dominance, and an unbreakable will to accomplish the president’s objectives,” Hegseth said.

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(NEW YORK) — From the campaign trail to Capitol Hill, a growing number of Democrats have said they believe President Donald Trump has committed impeachable offenses in his first year back in office.

But with their focus on the midterms, fewer elected Democrats are willing to commit to impeaching Trump if they win back control of the House, given likely Republican control of the Senate and potential for backlash from voters. 

Trump has predicted that Democrats will impeach him if they retake the House, and Republicans plan to make that threat a key piece of their midterm messaging.

“They will do anything to stop the Trump agenda,” Rep. Dan Meuser, a Republican from Pennsylvania, said of Democrats. “People, if they don’t want a two-year president, who they voted for pretty overwhelmingly in 2024, can’t allow the House to flip.”

Instead, many Democrats said they are focusing on the cost of living and the state of the economy.

“There’s a lot for me to be concerned about,” said Rep. Eugene Vindman, a Democrat from Virginia.

Vindman is an Army veteran and former national security official who played a role in raising concerns about Trump’s 2019 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the center of his first impeachment.

“The American people are concerned about costs, and meanwhile, the president is pursuing foreign adventures,” Vindman told ABC News.

Impeachment calls have picked up in 2026 amid the U.S. attack on Venezuela and the Justice Department’s investigations into Trump’s perceived opponents. A number of progressive Democrats from liberal districts and candidates in crowded blue-seat primaries have called for the impeachment of Trump and key cabinet officials.

Democrats are also setting their sights on Cabinet officials: More than 80 Democrats have cosponsored Illinois Democrat Rep. Robin Kelly’s articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem following the deployment of federal agents to Minnesota and the killing of a Minneapolis woman by a federal agent. 

Still, Democratic leaders are moving cautiously ahead of the midterms, when they will need to gain at least three seats to win control of Congress.

“If candidates and members of Congress are not relentlessly focusing on people’s everyday lives, they are making a mistake,” former Democratic Rep. Cheri Bustos, who led the House Democrats’ campaign committee, told ABC News.

“There’s so much of what President Trump has done, is doing, will do that can be labeled ‘impeachable offenses,’ but in the end what good is it going to do? Even if the House has the votes, the Senate will not go along with it,” she said.

The House has already rejected two impeachment pushes from Rep. Al Green, a Democrat from Texas. In June, 128 Democrats voted with Republicans to block his charges over the U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities without approval from Congress. 

In December, just 23 Democrats voted with Republicans to kill a second effort focused on Trump’s comments about Democrats who posted a social media video urging service members to refuse illegal orders, while another 47 voted present.

In a statement after that vote, House Democratic leaders called impeachment a “sacred constitutional vehicle” requiring a “comprehensive investigative process” that had not taken place.

“None of that serious work has been done, with the Republican majority focused solely on rubber stamping Donald Trump’s extreme agenda,” Reps. Hakeem Jeffries, Pete Aguilar and Katherine Clark said, arguing that voting “present” allowed them to “continue our fight to make life more affordable for everyday Americans.”

Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat and the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said there’s “definitely a rising clamor for impeachment.”

“Of course, it requires a majority vote of the House to get there, but we need a structured method of thinking through all the lawlessness and criminality taking place,” Raskin said.

Kat Abughazaleh, a 26-year-old activist who is running for Congress in Illinois, has argued that Democratic leaders need to “grow a f—ing spine,” and do more to challenge the Trump administration.

She has spoken out and protested against ICE activities in Chicago, and has pleaded not guilty to charges that she interfered with law enforcement during a protest outside an ICE facility in Illinois last fall that went viral on social media.

“One of the most critical failures in American politics is how our leaders have instilled this feeling that we shouldn’t fight for the world we want to see, that we shouldn’t take measures towards a future that we want to live in,” she told ABC News.

“Impeachment is just another tool in the accountability machine that’s supposed to work, but it doesn’t,” she said.

Raskin, who would lead impeachment proceedings in a Democratic House, said he would be “moving very quickly” in the next two months on “announcing a systematic way of thinking” about the various actions of the Trump administration that Democrats find objectionable, and potentially worth investigating.

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(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump is bashing two of the Democrats who repeatedly interrupted his State of the Union speech by shouting at him, calling them “LUNATICS” who “look like they should be institutionalized” in a social media post on Wednesday.

During his Tuesday evening address, Trump attacked Democrats several times, with his comments on his immigration crackdown eliciting jeers from Democratic Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, who repeatedly said the president was “killing Americans” — a reference to the fatal shootings of Minnesota residents Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal law enforcement earlier this year.

Their fatal shootings were amid the administration’s “Operation Metro Surge,” which sent federal agents to Minnesota as part of its immigration enforcement. Border czar Tom Homan announced earlier this month that the effort was ending.

“When you watch Low IQ Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, as they screamed uncontrollably last night at the very elegant State of the Union, such an important and beautiful event, they had the bulging, bloodshot eyes of crazy people, LUNATICS, mentally deranged and sick who, frankly, look like they should be institutionalized,” Trump said.

In his social media post, Trump also said “we should send them back from where they came — as fast as possible.”

Omar, who fled Somalia and came to the U.S. as a refugee when she was a child, has been living in the country since she was 12 years old and is a U.S. citizen. Tlaib was born and raised in Detroit; she is the daughter of Palestinian immigrant parents.

Trump’s social media post about Omar and Tlaib mark his first comments the day after his major address.

Omar has been the target of verbal attacks from Trump for years. Earlier this year, his attacks have come alongside escalated rhetoric describing the Somali community in Minnesota, the largest in the nation.

During Tuesday night’s speech, Democrats remained seated when Trump asked members of the chamber to stand if they supported the idea that the American government was “to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.”

“You should be ashamed of yourselves,” Trump said at the seated Democrats.

“You have killed Americans,” Omar, a Democrat from Minnesota, repeatedly shouted as Trump continued talking.

Tlaib, who was seated next to Omar, also shouted at the president throughout his speech. She even appeared to repeatedly mouth “K-K-K” as Republicans chanted “U-S-A, U-S-A.”

Omar told CNN Wednesday morning that she had no regrets for calling out the president during the speech, especially since Trump did not mention the fatal shootings of Good and Pretti.

“It was really unavoidable. The president talked about protecting Americans, and I just had to remind him that his administration was responsible for killing two of my constituents,” she said.

The speech was punctuated at times by other interjections, including from Tlaib, a Democrat of Michigan and outspoken critic of the president, who at one point in the speech called Trump “the most corrupt president.”

After the president said that Democrats “are crazy,” Tlaib, who was wearing a pin that said, “F*** ICE,” stood briefly, then sat down again before again shouting at Trump from her seat.

“How’s those Epstein files?” she shouted as the president spoke.

Neither Omar nor Tlaib were asked to leave the chamber, but they were among the many Democrats who left before Trump finished his speech, which lasted one hour and 48 minutes — making it the longest speech before a joint session of Congress in history.

House Speaker Mike Johnson was asked after the speech if Omar or Talib would see any consequences for their actions.

“We’ll find out,” Johnson responded.

ABC News’ Sarah Beth Hensley and Ivan Pereira contributed to this report.

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