Trump says Democrats’ message to military is ‘seditious behavior’ punishable by death

President Donald Trump on Thursday accused half a dozen Democratic lawmakers of sedition “punishable by DEATH” after the lawmakers — all veterans of the armed services and intelligence community — called on U.S. military members to uphold the Constitution and defy “illegal orders.”

The 90-second video was first posted early Tuesday from Sen. Elissa Slotkin’s X account. In it, the six lawmakers — Slotkin, Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, and Reps. Jason Crow, Chris Deluzio, Maggie Goodlander and Chrissy Houlahan — speak directly to U.S. service members, whom Slotkin acknowledges are “under enormous stress and pressure right now.”

“The American people need you to stand up for our laws and our Constitution,” Slotkin wrote in the X post. Along with the Michigan senator, the other lawmakers appearing in the video are seen as possible future aspirants for higher office, who now, thanks to the video’s wide exposure, have elevated their own political profiles.

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 the soon-to-be-released files about disgraced financier and sexual abuser Jeffrey Epstein.

What Democrats said in the video

With pieces of dialogue spliced together from different members, the lawmakers introduce themselves and their background. They go on to say the Trump administration “is pitting our uniformed military against American citizens.” They call for service members to “refuse illegal orders” and “stand up for our laws.”

The lawmakers conclude the video by encouraging service members, “Don’t give up the ship,” a War of 1812-era phrase attributed to a U.S. Navy captain’s dying command to his crew.

Although the lawmakers didn’t mention specific circumstances in the video, its release comes as the Trump administration continues attempts at deployment of National Guard troops into U.S. cities for various roles, although some have been pulled back, and others held up in court.

Are U.S. troops allowed to disobey orders?

Troops, especially uniformed commanders, have a specific obligation to reject an order that’s unlawful, if they make that determination.

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.

Broad legal precedence holds that just following orders, colloquially known as the “Nuremberg defense” as it was used unsuccessfully by senior Nazi officials to justify their actions under Adolf Hitler, doesn’t absolve troops.

However, the U.S. 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, willfully disobeying a superior commissioned officer, and Article 92, failure to obey an order.

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How Trump and others responded

On Thursday, Trump reposted to social media an article about the video, adding his own commentary that it was “really bad, and Dangerous to our Country.”

“SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR FROM TRAITORS!!!” Trump went on. “LOCK THEM UP???” He called for the lawmakers’ arrest and trial, adding in a separate post that it was “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH.”

Trump also reposted more than a dozen comments from other accounts criticizing Democrats, including one that stated: “HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD !!”

Asked during a White House briefing on Thursday about the intent of Trump’s messages, press secretary Karoline Leavitt instead honed in on the Democrats’ message, which she posited “perhaps is punishable by law.” Leavitt went on to say that any incitement to “defy the chain of command, not to follow lawful orders” is “a very dangerous thing for sitting members of Congress to do, and they should be held accountable, and that’s what the president wants to see.”

Democrats were swift to react to Trump’s words, with Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer warning in a floor speech that the president was “lighting a match in a country soaked with political gasoline.”

Speaker Mike Johnson said he did not believe Trump was calling for violence in the social media posts, saying Trump was merely “defining a crime,” and calling the Democrats’ video “wildly inappropriate.”

“Think of the threat that is to our national security and what it means for our institution,” Johnson added.

Trump’s allies balked at the video. On Wednesday on Fox News, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller called the messaging “insurrection — plainly, directly, without question” and said it represented “a general call for rebellion from the CIA and the armed services of the United States, by Democrat lawmakers.”

On X, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth commented on the video Tuesday as “Stage 4 TDS,” referring to “Trump Derangement Syndrome” — 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.

The Steady State, which describes itself as “a network of 300+ national and homeland security experts standing for strong and principled policy, rule of law, and democracy,” wrote in a Substack post on Thursday that the lawmakers’ call was “only 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.”

Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell challenged the theory that illegal orders were being issued.

“Our military follows orders, and our civilians give legal orders,” Parnell told The Associated Press on Thursday. “We love the Constitution. These politicians are out of their minds.”

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Associated Press writers Kevin Freking, Stephen Groves and Konstantin Toropin contributed to this report.

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Meg Kinnard can be reached at http://x.com/MegKinnardAP