Bulwark Takes - Unearthed Fox Footage Blows Up Hegseth’s Court Martial Claims (w/ Andrew Kaczynski)

Episode Date: December 9, 2025

Sam Stein sits down with CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski to discuss Pete Hegseth’s past comments on military law and unlawful orders. Kaczynski unearthed video of Hegseth defending troops for refusing illegal orders—something he now attacks Democratic lawmakers for saying. Exclusive $35 off Carver Mat at https://on.auraframes.com/BULWARKTAKES. Promo Code BULWARKTAKES Read more of Andrew’s work: https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/08/politics/hegseth-trump-warned-unlawful-orders-kfile

Hey, everybody. It's me, Sam Stein, managing editor at the bulwark, and I'm about to have a lifetime achievement, or at least something I've been wanting to do forever. I'm going to talk with Andrew Kaczyns, who is of CNN. I've been a long-time fan of Andrews, as he knows, from my constant DMs. And we're going to be talking for the first time. I think this is our first time doing something like this, right? First time, yeah. Oh, my God. Why did we wait this so long? We're going to talk about Andrew's reporting on Pete Heggseth. In particular, A couple clips that you've surfaced of, I want to call the Department of Defense Secretary. I'm not going to Department of War prior in his life saying that soldiers don't have to disobey illegal orders. Andrew, before we get into it, I guess it's worth sort of setting the table why this matters, right? So why don't you give us the back story about why it matters that Hague says said this back in 2016 or whatever? Well, I mean, it's because him and Trump, and, I mean, Trump in particular, suggested that Democratic members of Congress.

I mean, I guess what? He didn't suggest, right? He said it. No, he said it. He said it. He said it. Like, we're trying to be careful sometimes and say, suggest in our public, like, he said it. He said it.

Yeah. That Democratic members of Congress who said that troops didn't need to follow unlawful orders should be executed. Is that Trump said? Like, do you say, what was the- Well, he called it sedition, and he said the punishment for sedition is execution, right? I mean, yeah, that's the proper description, right? And the backstory was that there was, like, six Senate Democrats or six congressional Democrats who had put out a very kind of weird, timed video or oddly timed video where they just reminded troops that you do not have to follow

unlawful orders, okay? Trump responds. And then Pete Higgseth says he's going to court-martial one in particular, and that's Senator Mark Kelly because I guess Mark Kelly was the only one of the six who was he could court-martial. So then what did you find that made it hypocritical? Well, if we go back, you first last week, and the thing that's most, I guess, sort of ridiculous about all this is that what they said is just law.

You know, that is just military law. It is military law that you do not have to follow unlawful orders. It is in the Uniform Military Code of Justice. You know, you're required to follow lawful orders, but you don't need to follow unlawful ones. So last week we found a video of Pete Hig Seth giving a speech in April 2016 where he's like. Let's be honest, there's a pent-up supply of attacks on Donald Trump on the report. Republican side of the spectrum. A lot of people held back for a long time. Last debate, Marco Rubio did. In this debate, it was Rubio and Cruz ruling at Trump. And they went

with the New York Times transcript, with Trump, with Trump University, with offshoring jobs and ties. I mean, they were going with everything they could. Military leaders saying you could not possibly kill the families of would-be terrorists and they would not follow the order. And is answered, Donald Trump's answer on what if the generals won't listen to you when you say take out the family? Oh, they'll listen. That's really not the answer. No, I got some response from vets on that saying you're not just going to follow that order if it's unlawful. Right. Especially because what happened to the CIA last time, they end up with the, they get legal authority to do waterboarding. Next thing, you know, there's a new president and they have to go lawyer up.

And that was essentially the same thing that all these Democratic senators were saying, right? Now, I remembered, and it's weird because like 2016 seems so long ago. It is long ago. It is long ago, right? I'm getting older. But there was one of the presidential debates that I five remembered when I was like searching for this stuff because I was like Pete Hagseth. He was like always commenting. He's always on Fox.

I was like, what did he say? There was a controversy where Trump literally said it to debate. He said he's going to bring back torture like big time. All right. And so I was like, what did Hague says say around this stuff? So we went over to the internet archivalry. archive way back machine. And that's where we found that Hexas said not once, not twice, but three times in comments that were to be clear targeting Trump. He's responding to Trump

being like, the military is going to follow my orders to say, you know, literally direct quote, you're not going to follow an order if it's unlawful. Military is not going to follow illegal orders. And then there was a whole, um, a whole thing on Megan Kelly where he's really critical of Trump where he's calling Trump all bluster, calls him an armchair, tough guy. He brings up all of his draft firmments. I mean, it's crazy to think about now. He's defending John McKean, the honor of John McCain. It's typical Trump, all bluster, very little substance.

He talks a tough game. But then when pressed on it, he's an armchair tough guy. I hate to say it. But this is a guy who said that John McCain is not a war hero, yet he sought his own five military deferments. Because he says big, blustery things that people want to hear after seven years of mom jeans from Barack Obama, who refuses to fight the enemy, and frankly has restrictive rules of engagement that hurt our men and women on the battlefield.

But he goes way too far. And then when the military says, we won't follow illegal orders like torture or killing families, which is not loosening the rules of engagement, he suddenly realizes, wait, I might actually be Commander-in-Chief. And the problem here is that voters don't know whether you get the bluster Trump, which is the armchair tough guy, or you get the one who walks it back on a statement. now and says, no, no, no, I'll follow the law. And he's attacking Trump and he's like, you know, it's funny because the exact quote

that Hegseth used on Megan Kelly is like Trump is going to create ambiguity for the military because he's going to be like, you know, follow my orders and they might not follow my orders. They will follow his orders in Hakes says like that's going to create ambiguity for the military. And that is like literally the same thing that he's now attacking senators for saying. He was like there. The statement that they give is that they claim the Democratic senators created this process where now, you know, there's ambiguity around should we follow this order. And that's literally almost exactly what Pete Higgseth was saying in these clips.

And that's why we expect that Hags Heth will court marshal himself at this point, right? No. Can you, you've watched more clips than probably anyone in human history. I think it might be helpful to sort of get people reoriented by what 2016 Republican and primary Fox News was. This is pre-Trump emerging as the candidate. It was like, you know, early on. Well, this is March.

Okay, so this happens in March, all right? Yeah. And I had totally forgotten about, like, there had been at this point, like, I think Marco Rubio was still in. John Kasich is still in. Oh, yeah. He was like the last to go. He was eating a bunch of Italian food on the trail.

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But, and the first Super Tuesday, Trump won most of the delegates. And this is before, like, there was like super. Tuesday too. And maybe I'm not remembering correctly, but I think that's when Trump wins Florida and like Rubio drops out. Yeah. But that's where we are when we're having this debate. And, uh, you know, it's like, it's Fox, too. It's like Megan, Megan Kelly is like really like, you know, she's the one who's like bringing the people on. It's funny because you have, even Pete Hagsas. So Pete Hankseth is like, Pete Hankseth is like, Pete Hakess as like long time like crusade almost. Urban stories on this has been like, we need to like loosen the rules of

engagement for groups and so it's like you have pete haggseth who's like he literally says even like even for pete higseth trump has gone too far with what he's said all right and then you have like you have like carl higby who's on the other side who's like defending trump and so it's like you have those two those two going at going at each other one is defending trump one is like attacking trump and and even even for for pete higseth trump has gone too far in these clips so i want to peel back the current a little bit. Then I want to get into your kind of process. The reason I want to book you on is there's an internal bulwark slack thing happening

here, which is, you know, when this first happened and Heggseth was like, I'm court marshalling Mark Kelly. I was, I slacked internally with some folks. I wonder if Pete Heggseth back in the day was like, we can't, you know, troops can't, you know, can disobey unlawful orders. I imagine he had said it around Obama, whereas like, you don't have to obey. on Obama order. And there was a colleague here.

I'm not going to name names, Andrew Hager, who did not, was like, no way. He's like, Hanks had Salfour, like, let the guys torture. Let him do what they want. Ain't no way. And so basically you proved that I'm clairvoyant and you made Andrew look silly internally, and that's the entire reason I'm doing this video.

That's what I thought, too. I was like, Because I was, like, searching around, and I was like, I wasn't even thinking about Heg-Seth, all right, when I was looking for the clips. I was thinking anybody connecting Trump, Pam Bondi, New York Times had a great story today about how Pam Bondi also filed, like, a court briefing or something saying troops can't disobey. I missed that one. Yeah, yeah. I know, right? There's, like, so much coming on.

But I was like, who, so I wasn't even necessarily looking for Hegg-Seth, and he was the one that I found. But I had a very large because we, when he picked Hegseth, I was sort of like, I was like, oh, my God. Because, like, there's so much to go through because he's been on Fox for forever. He's doing speeches forever. It's like, well, can I ask you about that? Yeah, sure, sure. What's your process here? Like, I mean, I've always sort of marveled at your ability to dive through the stuff.

And honestly, I've tried to an occasion emulate it with just a bunch of lightweight bag machine searches and, you know, Lex's Nexus, when I use that stuff and just a lot of Google stuff. But like, what's your process for doing a search like that? I mean, at least for Hague Seth, the way we found these additional clips was I went to the archive.org, internet wayback machine, which has television. You know, they have internet, but they also have television archived going all the way back to 2010. It's an amazing resource.

And I went and searched and, you know, they're like transcripts aren't perfect. So, like, my name, like, Kaczynski is never coming up on the transcripts. So, but I searched, like, unlawful. I looked after I found the initial clip last week, because I already had that saved because I had all, I made a huge database of all Pete Hacksett's old comments when he was selected to see what does he said, who is this guy? What does he believe? All right? And so it was, I found the first clip about two weeks ago, but then I was like, I want to really target this whole controversy at the debate. There is no way that Pete Hagseth, Fox News contributor at the time, always talking about military affairs, was there was no way that he did not comment on this.

Right. Right. So I went back and I went to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. I popped in the exact date and I searched just, you know, I put in Pete and then like the search string and I put like on lawful orders. And it pulled up, you know, at least, at least three clips of him talking about this on Fox News, Fox Business. there's probably more there's probably more but i kind of thought three was enough to like get the point across that this is what he said do you do your eyes start to glaze over ever like do you have bad vision are you just how do you like we're all just staring out screens we're all staring at screens all day right that's good point you think it would it would have materialized now if it was going to affect your vision i mean it probably is i have really i were pretty intense contact lenses um and if it's not on tv but like there's a like the other piece you had was a speech he gave, right?

Like, that was not a TV appearance. It's on YouTube. I think I found it through, like, Facebook or something. Facebook is a really good place to find stuff, dude. You can do good searches through there? Sometimes. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't.

I'm not really sure why it doesn't work sometimes. They have a really good date search. Do you still get the thrill when you uncover, like, a good nugget like that, or has that worn off at all? I mean, sometimes, you know? I would say, yeah, it still gets me jazzed. Yeah, I mean, sometimes, like, it's important. I still get, you know.

Yeah, nice discovery like that. I guess I want to, there's a philosophical question, though, I suppose that's worth asking, which is like you've uncovered so much hypocrisy over the course of your career. And, you know, it's great. I mean, it's important. I think that actually is valuable. Like, this stuff is valuable. I don't want you to feel, you know, distressed about it.

But, like, at the same time, does it act? It feels like it increasingly doesn't matter in politics where it's like, oh, yeah, Pete Hankseth, like, took a diametrically different position nine years ago on this issue. Now he wants to court-martial someone for something he himself said. And it's just like we're going to keep going on with our routines. I still think it's important, right? Yeah. It's important. Like, we know that he is, especially because, like, at least in this particular instance, the, like, the harshness in which he's going after.

Like, I mean, Trump, like, suggested these people should. be executed. Like he was re-truthing. Didn't he retreat someone who said they should be hung? Like this is like this is so it's like it is important at least in this distance because like they they stated the uniform military code of justice. And Pete Hagseth as we've seen now has done that at least four times. And three of the instances is like, look like he singled out Trump. He said Trump might be somebody who issues unlawful orders. And if they does, they shouldn't be obeyed. Yeah.

Well, listen, I appreciate your work. Thank you. Thank you. You have one person. One person out there at least who appreciates what you're doing. No, it's been a pleasure, man. I've always wanted to have you on. I'm sorry, it took forever to get you booked.

Let's do it again. Would you do it again? This hasn't been too painful? Anytime. I'm available. We put this together and like, I don't know, it's 5 o'clock. We put this together in like two hours. Let's do it again.

Absolutely. It would be a joy. Andrew Kaczynski of CNN. You guys got to go read his work whenever he does something. It's fantastic. And sign up for CNN, too. It's behind the paywall, sign up. If you want to keep KFall going.

Maybe if you want to keep KFa going, but also sign up for both work, you know, if you want to have conversations like this. Why not? Yeah, just do both. Maybe we'll start a bundle someday. You guys have some other things going on, okay? We won't talk about that. Andrew, thanks, buddy. Really appreciate it.