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Democrat lawmakers told the military to refuse illegal orders in a video released Tuesday
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Democratic lawmakers targeted in President Donald Trump’s death penalty threat said that they were disappointed over the reaction from their Republican colleagues.
“Those who are in leadership positions and have taken the oath to tell the truth and to defend our Constitution, who are failing to speak up are not fulfilling their oaths,” Jason Crow (D-Colo.) told The Independent’s Eric Garcia Thursday.
Earlier Thursday, Trump lashed out at the group of military or intelligence community veterans that, in a recent video, called for service members to uphold their oaths to the Constitution and “refuse illegal orders.”
The president accused them of having engaged in “seditious behavior at the highest level.” He called them “traitors to our country” who should be “arrested and put on trial.”
In a follow-up post, the president appeared to suggest they should receive the death penalty, writing, “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!”
House Speaker Mike Johnson criticized the video on Thursday, describing it to Garcia as “wildly inappropriate.”
During a press briefing later in the day, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt echoed this sentiment, claiming the Democrats’ message “could inspire chaos.”
Democrats whom President Donald Trump said had committed “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR” that was “punishable by DEATH” said they were furious that their Republican colleagues did not defend them.
On Tuesday, Reps. Jason Crow (D-Colo.), Chrissy Houlahan (D-Penn.) and Chris DeLuzio (D-Penn.), as well as Sens. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) and Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) posted a video telling U.S. servicemembers that they can refuse illegal orders.
That sent Trump into a rage, and he said they could be executed.
“I never expected that just simply and clearly stating what Federal law says, would ask the president to threaten violence against me, that that’s a situation we’re in,” Goodlander told The Independent.
Many were informed by others, such as their staff or other colleagues.
“I was in a meeting with other colleagues who are more online than I am,” Goodlander said.
Houlahan said she was not afraid after the remarks from the president.
“It’s astounding that we live in a time when the President of the United States can openly threaten the lives of six members of Congress,” Houlahan told The Independent.
But many of them criticized the fact that almost no Republicans defended them. In fact, House Speaker Mike Johnson told The Independent that “that was a wildly inappropriate thing for so called leaders in Congress to do to encourage young troops to disobey orders.” Other Republican senators mostly said that they had not seen the posts from the president despite the fact he made multiple ones.
All of them, save for Kelly, showed up to vote in the House and Senate on Thursday.
Crow, a Democrat and former Army Ranger who tried to protect his colleagues after the Jan. 6 riot, criticized Johnson.
“Every time somebody lies or mischaracterizes what people say or don’t say, it further aggravates what is already a very tough situation. Right now, our country needs leadership,” Crow told The Independent. “Those who are in leadership positions and have taken the oath to tell the truth and to defend our Constitution, who are failing to speak up, are not fulfilling their oaths.”
The move comes as Trump has continued to use the military for extrajudicial killings of people on boats coming from Venezuela. The president also deployed troops and the National Guard to cities like Los Angeles, Portland and Chicago. But so far, Republicans have remained silent.
Houlahan compared the situation to the fact that many Democrats joined on a resolution denouncing political violence after the shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk in September.
“And yet, here we are now, just weeks later, really, and my Republican colleagues can’t find the heart and the gut and the morality to identify that it’s not okay for the leader of the free world to threaten to murder members of Congress,” she said.
“I think fear is contagious and courageous too, and I don’t bow to threats,” Goodlander said. “And I’m here to do a job.”
Donald Trump ally Steve Bannon has urged the president to “bang some heads” and come up with a game plan for Republicans amid dismal recent polling.
“Let’s run the table [with] a simple plan, aggressively executed,” Bannon, the host of War Room and Trump’s chief strategist during his first term, told Axios. “The President may have to bang some heads. [His] entire plan has an objective of GROWTH, JOBS, HIGHER WAGES — now execute.”
Just weeks after a blue wave swept elections across the country, a series of recent polls this week suggest Trump’s approval rating is slipping as the administration copes with the fallout from the Epstein files and a turbulent economy.
After months of resistance to making the government files related to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein public, Trump on Wednesday signed the bill to release the highly anticipated records. The president, who campaigned on affordability, has also faced concerns over the economy; while the U.S. added 119,000 jobs in September, unemployment reached 4.4 percent and grocery prices remain high.
Read on…
Senator Mark Kelly, an Arizona Democrat and former Navy captain, has reacted to President Donald Trump’s threats of execution after he and other Democratic lawmakers released a video telling the military to refuse illegal orders.
“I’ve had a missile blow up next to my airplane, been shot at dozens of times by anti-aircraft fire, and launched into orbit — all for my country. I never thought I’d see a President call for my execution,” Kelly wrote on Thursday. “Trump doesn’t understand the Constitution, and we’re all less safe for it.”
Trump had accused the Democrats of “seditious behavior,” which he said was “punishable by death.”
Sure, Marjorie Taylor Greene is currently on the outs with Donald Trump after spearheading the Republican revolt over the Epstein files in the House and laying into Speaker Mike Johnson for the GOP’s continued failure to present a vision for reforming the American health care system.
But Donald Trump is also famously a man who understands the value of making peace with conservatives, rather than war, when it serves his purposes.
Take Greene’s fellow Republican on the discharge petition, Rep. Nancy Mace, as an example. Trump famously endorsed against her as recently as 2022, backing a Republican state representative in a failed primary bid to unseat the one-term congresswoman. But Mace, despite her thin resume on the Hill, won re-election easily — and Trump, ever eager to back the winning horse, let her back into the fold.
Perhaps the most famous member of Trumpworld to be banished was Elon Musk, the Tesla CEO and former DOGE chief whose roughshod run of the White House in January-April of this year rankled members of Trump’s Cabinet and quickly led to the downfall of Musk’s political crusade as he became a political anchor around the necks of Republicans.
Read on…
Representative Mike Lawler, a New York Republican, has said that the “rhetoric needs to be brought down stat” after Donald Trump accused Democrats of “seditious behavior,” which the president said was “punishable by death.”
The lawmakers had posted a video calling for the military to refuse illegal orders.
“Members of Congress should not be calling for active duty troops to defy orders issued by the Commander-in-Chief by trying to imply they have been given illegal orders and not being able to cite one,” Lawler wrote on X Thursday.
He continued: “The President should not imply that Members of Congress should face death, no matter how ill-advised their comments are.”
The White House on Thursday defended President Donald Trump’s call for a group of Democratic legislators to be put to death by hanging after they teamed up for a social media video urging service members to “refuse” what they deemed to be “illegal orders.”
Asked about the matter in her briefing, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt accused the senators and Congress members of delivering a “radical message” that could “disrupt the chain of command.” But she did not try to clarify or tamp down the president’s inflammatory call for a violent end.
Earlier in the day, Trump took to Truth Social to accuse senators Elissa Slotkin of Michigan and Mark Kelly of Arizona, plus Colorado Rep. Jason Crow, New Hampshire Representative Maggie Goodlander and Pennsylvania’s Chris Deluzio and Chrissy Houlahan of engaging in what he described as “seditious behavior” by participating in the video, calling them “traitors to our country” who should be “arrested and put on trial.”
He later posted a message in which he repeated his all-caps accusation of “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR” from the lawmakers before claiming that such “behavior” is “punishable by DEATH,” along with a repost of another Truth Social user who encouraged him to “HANG THEM.”
Read on…
Earlier Thursday, Trump accused Slotkin and other Democratic lawmakers who called for the military to disobey illegal orders of “seditious behavior,” which he said was “punishable by death.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson defended President Donald Trump’s saying that Democratic members of Congress should face the death penalty for saying that members of the military can refuse orders if they believe those commands violate their oaths to the Constitution.
A handful of Democratic members of Congress and senators who served in the U.S. military or intelligence posted a video on social media on Tuesday saying that members of the military can refuse orders they deem illegal.
Trump posted on Truth Social describing their behavior as seditious and insinuated they deserve the death penalty.
But Johnson said that Trump simply defined what crime they committed.
“What I read was he was defining the crime of sedition,” he told The Independent. “But obviously attorneys have to parse the language and determine all that. What I’m saying, what I will say unequivocally, that was a wildly inappropriate thing for so called leaders in Congress to do to encourage young troops to disobey orders.”
Eric Garcia reports…
Donald Trump allegedly called Jeffrey Epstein moments after his 2016 election victory over Hillary Clinton, contrary to his later claims he had not spoken to the pedophile financier in many years.
The president had called Epstein to express his shock at the victory, his brother Mark Epstein told CNN in an interview.
Trump said in 2019 that although he and Epstein were at one point close friends, their relationship had soured and he had not spoken to him in “probably 15 years,” adding “I wasn’t a fan of Jeffrey Epstein let me tell you.”
Mike Bedigan reports…
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt spoke about Trump’s upcoming meeting with Zohran Mamdani, the incoming mayor of New York City.
During a press briefing on Thursday, a reporter questioned whether there is anything the Democratic socialist can do to “ease” concerns from Trump.
“I won’t get into the president’s thinking,” Leavitt said. “You’ll all hear from him directly.”
She added, “It speaks volumes that tomorrow we have a communist coming to the White House because that’s who the Democrat Party elected as the mayor of the largest city in the country.”
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