The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, stated repeatedly in 2016 on Fox News that US service members should refuse “unlawful” orders from a potential president Trump – exactly the position he called “despicable” when Democratic lawmakers said it last month.

The debate about whether US soldiers should refuse illegal orders is now at the center of a fiery political dispute over the US killings of alleged drug traffickers in boats off the coast of Venezuela and Colombia.

In video unearthed by CNN from March of 2016, when Donald Trump was a Republican presidential candidate, Hegseth responded to Trump’s comments in a debate by clarifying that service members did, in fact, have a duty to refuse any illegal orders.

“You’re not just gonna follow that order if it’s unlawful,” Hegseth, then a Fox News contributor, said in an appearance on the show Fox & Friends, where he would eventually become a host.