As USA Journal has reported, the fallout from last Tuesday’s video featuring six Democrat members of Congress is only getting more explosive. President Trump has labeled their actions “seditious,” and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has now launched a formal investigation into Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), one of the lawmakers who took part in the video.
What Democrats tried to frame as some noble stand for “constitutional principles” is rapidly unraveling into one of the most serious self-inflicted scandals their caucus has created in years. Their attempt to tell military personnel to selectively defy orders has backfired — dramatically — and now the potential consequences are landing exactly where they belong.
Kelly claimed without providing evidence that “this administration” was “turning our uniformed military and intelligence community professionals against American citizens.” Later, he mentioned, “You can refuse illegal orders.” However, at no point did any of the participants, including Reps. Chris Deluzio (PA-17), Chrissy Houlahan (PA-06), Maggie Goodlander (NH-02), Jason Crow (CO-06), and Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), specify what those “illegal orders” might be.
On Monday, the Department of War wrote that it had “received serious allegations of misconduct against Captain Mark Kelly, USN (Ret.).”
“In accordance with the Uniform Code of Military Justice, 10 U.S.C. § 688, and other applicable regulations, a thorough review of these allegations has been initiated to determine further actions,” the social media post went on to note.
On Monday evening, Kelly was a guest on the Democrats’ preferred “news” channel, MS NOW (previously MSNBC), for a discussion with host Rachel Maddow. During the exchange, Maddow inquired about the “illegal orders” and whether the legislators – who were all former military members or intelligence officials – had any specific individuals in mind when they produced the video.
Obviously, Kelly’s response to a direct question from Maddow on ‘what’s illegal that you’ve seen’ is a very poor attempt at being clever:
MADDOW: “When you and your colleagues made that video, were there specific, potentially illegal orders that you were thinking about that were the sort of precipitating cause for you guys to get together and do that?”
KELLY: “Here’s the thing, Rachel. You don’t want to wait for your kid to get hit by a car before you tell them to look both ways.”
He could have simply said, “Here’s the thing, Rachel. You don’t want to wait for an illegal order from President Trump to come down the pipe before you start disobeying him.”
What. The. Hades:
Slotkin made a similar admission Sunday after being asked the same question by ABC News “This Week” anchor Martha Raddatz:
As of now, no participant in the video has successfully identified any purported “illegal order” issued by the Trump administration. And given that the entire video was an attempt to get currently serving members of the military to disobey their Commander-in-Chief, that’s kinda important – if there have not been any ‘illegal orders’ issued, why make the video?
You know why, of course.
You don’t need to be part of the U.S. military to recognize the cunning nature of the Democratic lawmakers’ actions. Regarding whether it constitutes “seditious,” I’ll let our commenters discuss that.