Examining Hegseth’s statement US army doesn’t ‘fight with stupid rules of engagement’

On Sept. 30, 2025, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth convened a meeting of top generals at the Quantico Marine Corps base in Virginia, in what many news outlets referred to as a last-minute gathering. During the meeting, Hegseth gave a speech to the assembled officials in which he allegedly called on them to abandon the Geneva Conventions.

According to several posts on X and Facebook, Hegseth specifically called on troops to ignore “stupid rules of engagement.”

Drunk Hegseth just called for the USA to abandon the Geneva Conventions — saying our troops should ignore “stupid rules of engagement.”

FYI: Those “rules” were created after WWII to stop WAR CRIMES. Hegseth is defending atrocities on live TV.

Hegseth did not explicitly call on the military to abandon the Geneva Conventions during his Sept. 30 speech, but said troops “don’t fight with stupid rules of engagement.” He did not specify which Rules of Engagement (ROE) he was referring to. However, the U.S. is a signatory to the Geneva Conventions and ROE handbooks have referenced how the military is expected to follow the Conventions.

We have reached out to Hegseth to determine which ROEs he was referring to and will update this story if we get more information.

Hegseth made the following remarks at the 42:16 mark:

Per official transcripts (archived), Hegseth said the following addressing U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to rebrand the U.S. Department of Defense to the Department of War (emphasis, ours):

We have to be prepared for war, not for defense. We’re training warriors, not defenders. We fight wars to win, not to defend. Defense is something you do all the time. It’s inherently reactionary and can lead to overuse, overreach and mission creep. War is something you do sparingly on our own terms and with clear aims. We fight to win. We unleash overwhelming and punishing violence on the enemy.

We also don’t fight with stupid rules of engagement. We untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt and kill the enemies of our country. No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement, just common sense, maximum lethality and authority for warfighters.

Per a U.S. Marine Corps training handout, titled, “Law of War/Introduction to Rules of Engagement,” the ROE are “those directives that delineate the circumstances and limitations under which United States (US) forces will initiate and/or continue combat engagement.” These rules specifically apply to U.S. armed forces. 

The same guide references the Geneva Conventions thus on page 7: 

All persons we detain on the battlefield, regardless of their status, are treated the same. All detainees have rights under the Geneva Convention that guide us in their handling. If they are injured, we provide treatment as if one of our own Marines. 

The Geneva Conventions are a body of international laws governing armed conflict, first laid out in 1949, that “protect people who do not take part in the fighting (civilians, medics, aid workers) and those who can no longer fight (wounded, sick and shipwrecked troops, prisoners of war).” Under the laws’ ROE, the U.S. thus adheres to the Geneva Conventions in handling prisoners of war. 

The U.S. is a signatory to the Geneva Conventions and therefore subject to its rules. In practice, however, the U.S. has been accused of violating the Conventions many times, including in Afghanistan in 2021, in reports of their treatment of suspected militant detainees in Guantanamo Bay and CIA-run prisons overseas, and the 1968 My Lai massacre in Vietnam.

Though he did not reference the Geneva Conventions in his speech on Sept. 30, Hegseth has questioned the appropriateness of following these laws in the past. In his 2024 book, “The War on Warriors,” Hegseth wrote: “Should we follow the Geneva Conventions? What if we treated the enemy the way they treated us? Would that not be an incentive for the other side to reconsider their barbarism?”

During his January 2025 confirmation hearings, Hegseth was questioned about his views on the Geneva Conventions. Hegseth defended Trump’s methods of tackling militancy abroad, which led to Independent U.S. Sen. Angus King from Maine asking if he believed U.S. laws that incorporated the Geneva Conventions should be repealed. Their exchange went as follows (emphasis, ours):

KING: Your quote in 2024, “Our boys should not fight by rules written by dignified men in mahogany rooms 80 years ago.” That would be the Geneva Convention. “America should fight by its own rules, and we should fight to win or not go in at all.” Are you saying that the Geneva Convention provisions, which clearly outlaw torture of prisoners, do not — should not apply in the future?

HEGSETH: Senator, how we treat our wounded, how we treat our prisoners, the applications of the Geneva Conventions are incredibly important, but we would all have to acknowledge that the way we fought our wars back when the Geneva Conventions were written are a lot different than the asymmetric, non-conventional environment of counter-insurgency that I confronted in Iraq and Afghanistan.

[…]

I’ve never been party to torture. We are a country that fights by the rule of law, and our men and women always do, and yet we have too many people here in air-conditioned offices that like to point fingers at the guys in dark and dangerous places, the gals in helicopters in enemy territory who are doing things that people in Washington, D.C., would never dare to do […]

What an America First national security policy is not going to do is hand its prerogatives over to international bodies that’s — make decisions about how our men and women make decisions on the battlefield. America First understands we send Americans for a clear mission and a clear objective. We have — equip them properly for that objective.

In short, Hegseth has expressed skepticism of adhering to the Geneva Conventions in the past, though he did not say so explicitly during the speech on Sept. 30. Until we know more about which ROE he was referring to, we are unable to rate this claim.

We have previously covered a number of rumors about Hegseth, including analyzing his past statements opposing the inclusion of women in combat roles and how he criticized troops and generals for being “fat.”  

Sources