In 2016, as then-presidential candidate Donald Trump vowed that US troops would carry out even his most extreme battlefield orders as commander in chief — some of which former military leaders said would be illegal — Pete Hegseth warned that service members had a duty to refuse unlawful orders from a potential President Trump.
“You’re not just gonna follow that order if it’s unlawful,” Hegseth said in a March 2016 appearance on “Fox & Friends,” referring to veterans he spoke with.
“The military’s not gonna follow illegal orders,” Hegseth said of Trump in another March appearance on Fox Business.
A Fox News contributor at the time, Hegseth echoed similar sentiments during a speaking appearance a month later, saying the US military “won’t follow unlawful orders from their commander in chief,” in previously unreported comments unearthed exclusively by CNN’s KFile.
In 2016, Hegseth criticized Trump for saying he would give orders to the military some considered unlawful
Now as Trump’s secretary of defense, Hegseth has pivoted in recent weeks, denouncing Democrats for elevating similar concerns over unlawful orders related to the administration’s attacks on alleged drug boats that some lawmakers from both parties believe may have crossed legal lines.
The 2016 comments from Hegseth came at a moment when then-candidate Trump was drawing widespread criticism for proposals that military lawyers and commanders said would violate the laws of war, including killing the families of terrorists and reviving banned forms of torture.
That criticism came to a head in a March 2016 Republican presidential debate when Trump was pressed by moderators about warnings from former military leaders that US forces are legally obligated to reject unlawful orders.
“So what would you do, as commander in chief, if the US military refused to carry out those orders?” asked Fox News’ Bret Baier, one of the night’s moderators.
“They won’t refuse,” Trump responded. “They’re not going to refuse me. Believe me.”
Trump’s remarks came as he was consolidating his lead in the 2016 Republican primaries, fresh off a dominant Super Tuesday showing that left him the clear front-runner for the nomination.
As a Fox News contributor and former Army National Guard officer, Hegseth was frequently asked to weigh in on Trump’s national security proposals, and in the 2016 appearances he echoed that consensus view: that service members could face criminal consequences for carrying out illegal commands, that the military’s ethos requires refusing such orders, and that military members may have to refuse Trump.
The day after the debate, Hegseth was asked to respond to Trump’s comments in multiple appearances on Fox News.
“Here’s the problem with Trump,” Hegseth said in an appearance on Megyn Kelly’s show that night. “He says, ‘Go ahead and kill the family. Go ahead and torture. Go ahead and go further than waterboarding.’”
“What happens when people follow those orders, or don’t follow them? It’s not clear that Donald Trump will have their back,” Hegseth added. “Donald Trump is oftentimes about Donald Trump. And so you can’t; if you’re not changing the law and you’re just saying it, you create even more ambiguity.”
Hegseth argued the US could fight ruthlessly without abandoning its moral footing and warned that Trump’s rhetoric risked pushing troops past that line.
“What Donald Trump is doing here, though, creates more complications I think on the backend for a lot of our folks,” he said.
Trump later walked back his comments, saying in a statement the day after the debate, “I will not order a military officer to disobey the law. It is clear that as president I will be bound by laws just like all Americans and I will meet those responsibilities.”
In a statement to CNN, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said: “As he said last week, the military already has clear procedures for handling unlawful orders, but seditious Democrats injected ambiguity and failed to provide a single example because all of President Trump’s actions have been lawful. Instead, these lawmakers sowed doubt in a clear chain of command, which is reckless, dangerous, and deeply irresponsible for an elected official.”
Hegseth’s 2016 comments have taken on renewed significance as he leads a forceful campaign accusing a handful of Democrats of undermining the chain of command for posting a video urging troops to reject illegal orders — the very warning he delivered publicly years earlier.
His past remarks are now colliding with allegations that US forces under his watch carried out a follow-up strike that legal experts say could violate the laws of war.
Hegseth branded six Democratic lawmakers who urged US service members to disobey illegal orders the “Seditious Six,” and accused them of spreading “despicable, reckless, and false” information. He has ordered a Pentagon investigation into one of them, Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, a retired Navy captain.
The Democrats’ 90-second message warned that “threats to our Constitution” are coming “from right here at home” and reminded troops and intelligence personnel that they have a legal duty to reject unlawful orders.
“No one has to carry out orders that violate the law, or our Constitution,” they said. “Know that we have your back. … Don’t give up the ship.”
Although the lawmakers did not identify any specific orders they believed were illegal, the Democrats released the video amid a growing debate over the legality of US military strikes on suspected drug boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific and the deployment of active-duty troops to American cities over objections from governors.
Hegseth has said the lawmakers’ message was a “politically motivated influence operation” that “created ambiguity rather than clarity” around established legal processes, and argued that their warning to troops “undermines trust, creates hesitation in the chain of command, and erodes cohesion.”
