07/21/2026
Retired Major General Randy Manner, former acting vice chair of the Joint Chiefs for the National Guard, didn’t mince words about Trump’s Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's rhetoric.
After hearing Hegseth talk about “no quarter, no mercy” and unleashing “death and destruction from the sky,”in March. Manner responded:
“Those are the words of a potential war criminal.”
This isn’t just rhetorical flair. “No quarter” — refusing to take prisoners and showing no mercy — is explicitly prohibited under U.S. law and defined as a war crime. When a Secretary of Defense uses that language publicly, he is signaling a willingness to ignore the Geneva Conventions and the rules of war that protect civilians and our own troops.
Manner has warned that Hegseth is using “literally the words of war criminals,” and that even a presidential pardon from Trump would not shield him from possible accountability under international law. That’s how serious this is.
This is what Trump’s Pentagon looks like: top brass purged, international law dismissed, and a Secretary of Defense openly flirting with war crime rhetoric. If we let this become normal, we’re not just risking America’s moral standing — we’re putting our own service members in legal and physical danger.
In November, we’re not just voting on domestic policy. We’re voting on whether the United States will continue to respect the laws of war or be led by men whose own generals are calling them “potential war criminals.”
Vote like lives depend on it—because they do.
