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Hegseth, now the secretary of defense, insisted as a Fox News host in 2016 that then-candidate Trump was wrong for suggesting that military lawyers and commanders would violate the laws of war if he ordered them to kill the families of terrorists or revive banned forms of torture.

“They won’t refuse,” Trump told Fox News anchor Bret Baier when asked about the topic during a Republican presidential debate. “They’re not going to refuse me — believe me.”

Hegseth at the time cast doubt on whether Trump would back up his commanders if they followed those orders, and noted the campaign pivoted to what he considered an unrealistic position.

"The military is not going to follow illegal orders, and so the Trump campaign was forced to change their position and say, we're going to try to change the law so that the military can operate within the law," Hegseth said at the time. "That's a tall order also."

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