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Democrats say they will not be intimidated by Trump after accused of sedition over video urging service members to ‘refuse illegal orders’
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Zohran Mamdani has said he still believes that the U.S. preident Donald Trump is a “fascist” and “despot”, just days after the two politicians met for the first time in a surprisingly cordial meeting.
The mayor-elect of New York City insisted that he could work with Trump and said they both are not shy about the places of disagreement.“Everything that I’ve said in the past I continue to believe,” Mamdani told NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday when asked if he still considered Trump a threat to democracy.
“I think it is important in our politics that we don’t shy away from where we have disagreements.”
It came as Trump upped his attacks on Democratic lawmakers who posted a video telling service members to “refuse illegal orders.”
In one Truth Social post, Trump shared a screenshot of a social media user’s post referring to the Democratic Party as a “Domestic Terrorist party.”
In another post, Trump shared a screenshot in which a social media user appeared to call the lawmakers “traitorous communists”.Trump called for the Democratic lawmakers to be jailed in a pair of late-night Truth Social posts Saturday. He accused them “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL.”
Democratic senator Mark Kelly said he will not be intimidated by Trump.
New York City’s mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani insisted that he would be able to work with Donald Trump and the White House even as he defended his position that Trump is a fascist.
The incoming leader of the nation’s largest city was on Meet the Press on Sunday after a Friday meeting with Trump at the White House. Mamdani, a democratic socialist, represents part of his party’s emerging left flank as the greater Democratic coalition shifts and reorganizes itself following the devastating 2024 elections, which saw them lose key seats in the Senate as well as the presidency.
Mamdani reiterated that he thought he could work with Trump, a prospect that seemed fairly obvious to most people watching Friday’s meeting between the mayor-elect and a beaming, happy president who seemed almost enamored with his guest and his calls to reinvigorate the city of New York as the cameras rolled. Trump, for his part, denied racist accusations from members of his own party who claim that Mamdani, the city’s first Muslim mayor, was a “jihadist”.
A new CBS/YouGov poll has found that a majority of Americans do not believe President Donald Trump has done enough to explain any possible U.S. military action against Venezuela.
According to the poll, 76 percent of respondents said they felt the president had not adequately justified the U.S.’s aggression toward the South American nation, which has thus far taken the form of rhetoric and strikes against alleged “drug boats.”
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Senator Amy Klobuchar responded to criticism from President Donald Trump and other Republicans over a video by Democratic lawmakers — many of whom are veterans — urging members of the military and intelligence community to “refuse illegal orders.”
“Well, it’s very clear in this code for the military, you cannot follow unlawful orders,” Klobuchar, a Democrat, said Sunday on NBC News’ Meet the Press.
Klobuchar later added: “But the key is, this has been a long-time tenet of the American military, and it is very clearly right there, and that is all our colleagues were saying, and they have every right to say it. They have served our country bravely, they know what they’re talking about.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio praised the Ukraine peace talks in Geneva today.
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Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent criticized the Democratic lawmakers who published a video this week urging service members to “refuse illegal orders.”
“What I am confident of is that this was a display of gross, gross negligence,” Bessent said Sunday on NBC News’ Meet the Press. He did not answer a question about whether the Trump administration is issuing illegal orders.
“There is one commander in chief, and when you step outside of the chain of command and try to create the noise and chaos, that only helps our enemies,” he added.
Senator Rand Paul, a Republican, appeared to address President Donald Trump’s response to the six Democrats who filmed a video urging the military to “refuse illegal orders” this week.
Trump claimed Thursday the video was “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL,” and in another post claimed such behavior is “punishable by DEATH.” Trump went on to label them “TRAITORS” on Saturday night.
CBS News’ Margaret Brennan asked Paul about Trump’s “dangerous rhetoric” on Sunday.
“You know, everybody knows that the President is famous for his unfiltered social media,” Paul said. “But if you take at face value the idea that calling your opponents traitors and then specifically saying that it warrants the death penalty is reckless, inappropriate, irresponsible, there are a number of other ways to describe it, but it’s not something that is helping the country heal wounds.”
“I think it stirs things up and- and really, I think we can do better,” he added.
The battle over the fate of Tina Peters, a disgraced Colorado elections official who was convicted of felonies related to efforts to interfere with the 2020 election on Donald Trump’s behalf, grew thornier on Sunday with the intervention of the president himself.
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Latino Republicans are warning the GOP that the 2025 elections earlier this month show that their party risks losing the gains President Donald Trump made with Hispanic voters in 2024.
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Senator Elissa Slotkin, a Democrat who urged members of the military and intelligence community to “defy illegal orders” in a video with her colleagues this week, called President Donald Trump’s response a “tool of fear.”
On Truth Social this week, Trump labelled the video “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR,” and at one point claimed that sedition is “punishable by DEATH.”
“He’s trying to get us to shut up because he doesn’t want to be talking about this,” Slotkin said Sunday on ABC News’ This Week.
“In fact, I would argue that one of the things that he’s been doing by repeating it and talking about it is trying to distract us from the big stories of last week, which were the [Jeffrey] Epstein files and then the economy,” she added.
The U.S. agreed to make “some changes” to its contentious peace proposal to end the war in Ukraine today, following talks that both parties praised as a success.
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