President Donald Trump accused half a dozen Democratic lawmakers of sedition \u201cpunishable by DEATH\u201d after the lawmakers \u2014 all veterans of the armed services and intelligence community \u2014 called on US military members to uphold the Constitution and defy \u201cillegal orders”.<\/p>\n
The 90-second video was first posted early Tuesday (local time) from Sen. Elissa Slotkin\u2019s X account. In it, the six lawmakers \u2014 Slotkin, Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, and Reps. Jason Crow, Chris Deluzio, Maggie Goodlander and Chrissy Houlahan \u2014 speak directly to US service members, whom Slotkin acknowledges are \u201cunder enormous stress and pressure right now”.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe American people need you to stand up for our laws and our Constitution,\u201d Slotkin wrote in the X post.<\/p>\n
Trump on Thursday reposted messages from others about the video, amplifying it with his own words. It marked another flashpoint in the political rhetoric that at times has been thematic in his administrations, as well as among some in his MAGA base. Some Democrats accused him of acting like a king and trying to distract from soon-to-be-released files about disgraced financier and sexual abuser Jeffrey Epstein.<\/p>\n
What Democrats said in the video<\/p>\n
With pieces of dialogue spliced together from different members, the lawmakers introduce themselves and their background. They go on to say the Trump administration \u201cis pitting our uniformed military against American citizens. They call for service members to \u201crefuse illegal orders\u201d and \u201cstand up for our laws”.<\/p>\n
The lawmakers conclude the video by encouraging service members, \u201cDon\u2019t give up the ship,\u201d a War of 1812-era phrase attributed to a US Navy captain\u2019s dying command to his crew.<\/p>\n
Although the lawmakers didn\u2019t mention specific circumstances in the video, its release comes as the Trump administration continues attempts at deployment of National Guard troops into US cities for various roles, although some have been pulled back, and others held up in court.<\/p>\n
Are US troops allowed to disobey orders?<\/p>\n
Troops, especially uniformed commanders, have a specific obligation to reject an order that\u2019s unlawful, if they make that determination.<\/p>\n
However, while commanders have military lawyers on their staffs to consult with in helping make such a determination, rank-and-file troops who are tasked with carrying out those orders are rarely in a similar position.<\/p>\n
Broad legal precedence holds that just following orders, colloquially known as the \u201cNuremberg defence\u201d as it was used unsuccessfully by senior Nazi officials to justify their actions under Adolf Hitler, doesn\u2019t absolve troops.<\/p>\n
However, the US military legal code, known as the Uniform Code of Military Justice or UCMJ, will punish troops for failing to follow an order should it turn out to be lawful. Troops can be criminally charged with Article 90 of the UCMJ, wilfully disobeying a superior commissioned officer, and Article 92, failure to obey an order.<\/p>\n
How Trump, others responded<\/p>\n
Today, Trump reposted to social media an article about the video, adding his own commentary that it was \u201creally bad, and Dangerous to our Country.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR FROM TRAITORS!!!\u201d Trump went on. \u201cLOCK THEM UP???\u201d He also called for the lawmakers’ arrest and trial, adding in a separate post that it was \u201cSEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH.\u201d<\/p>\n
Democrats were swift to react to Trump’s words, with Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer warning in a floor speech that the president was \u201clighting a match in a country soaked with political gasoline.\u201d<\/p>\n
Speaker Mike Johnson said he did not believe Trump was calling for violence in the social media posts, saying Trump was merely \u201cdefining a crime,” and calling the Democrats’ video \u201cwildly inappropriate.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThink of the threat that is to our national security and what it means for our institution,\u201d Johnson added.<\/p>\n
Trump’s allies balked at the video. Wednesday on Fox News, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller called the messaging “insurrection \u2014 plainly, directly, without question\u201d and said it represented \u201ca general call for rebellion from the CIA and the armed services of the United States, by Democrat lawmakers.\u201d<\/p>\n
On X, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth commented on the video Tuesday as \u201cStage 4 TDS,\u201d referring to \u201cTrump Derangement Syndrome\u201d \u2014 a term used by Trump to describe voters so angry and opposed to him that they are incapable of seeing any good in what he does.<\/p>\n
The Steady State, which describes itself as \u201ca network of 300+ national and homeland security experts standing for strong and principled policy, rule of law, and democracy,\u201d wrote in a Substack post that the lawmakers\u2019 call was \u201conly a restatement of what every officer and enlisted servicemember already knows: illegal orders can and should be refused. This is not a political opinion. It is doctrine.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell challenged the theory that illegal orders were being issued.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur military follows orders, and our civilians give legal orders,\u201d Parnell told The Associated Press on Thursday. \u201cWe love the Constitution. These politicians are out of their minds.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"President Donald Trump accused half a dozen Democratic lawmakers of sedition \u201cpunishable by DEATH\u201d after the lawmakers \u2014…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":145455,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1403,65,42,43,64,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-145454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-defence","tag-donald-trump","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-north-america","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145454\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/145455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}