WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Donald Trump on Thursday assailed Democratic lawmakers who told members of U.S. military they must refuse any illegal orders, calling them traitors who could face execution.
Trump reposted an article about a video released Tuesday by six Democratic lawmakers who served in the military or in the intelligence community.
“SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” the Republican president wrote in a Truth Social post.
“This is really bad, and Dangerous to our Country,” Trump wrote in an earlier post. “Their words cannot be allowed to stand. SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR FROM TRAITORS!!! LOCK THEM UP???”
The Democratic lawmakers include Senators Elissa Slotkin, a former CIA analyst and Iraq war veteran, and Mark Kelly, a former astronaut and Navy veteran, as well as Representatives Jason Crow, Maggie Goodlander, Chris Deluzio and Chrissy Houlahan.
In the video, the lawmakers directly address members of the U.S. military and intelligence community, saying that the Trump administration was pitting those institutions against the American people and threatening tenets of the U.S. Constitution.
“We know you are under enormous stress and pressure right now,” they said.
“Our laws are clear: You can refuse illegal orders,” said Kelly. The other lawmakers offer a similar refrain before Slotkin concluded: “We need you to stand up for our laws, our Constitution. Don’t give up the ship.”
The lawmakers did not refer to any particular incident or scenario, and did not provide any examples of orders that they might consider illegal.
Some Democrats in Congress have been sharply critical of Trump’s military strikes on suspected drug traffickers in the southern Caribbean and the Pacific, focusing on the legality and lack of transparency. There have also been concerns that Trump will launch an attack on Venezuela itself.
“Calling for the execution of senators and members of Congress for reminding our troops of that is chilling behavior we should expect from authoritarians like (Hungarian leader Viktor) Orban or (Russian President Vladimir) Putin, not the president of the United States,” U.S. Senator Chris Coons, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, said in a statement.
“Every one of my Republican colleagues needs to stand up and swiftly condemn this.”
Since returning to the presidency in January, Trump has occasionally called for jailing people whom he sees as political enemies. His Justice Department has initiated investigations into some of them.
In November 2021, Trump defended the chants of his supporters who called for hanging Vice President Mike Pence as they stormed the U.S. Capitol in a deadly riot on January 6 of that year.
(Reporting by Doina Chiacu, Trevor Hunnicutt, Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Sergio Non and Edward Tobin)
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