There is a very thin line between irresponsible rhetoric and mutiny, and six sitting members of Congress came perilously close to crossing it earlier this week. A mutiny doesn’t need to resemble the dramatic Mutiny on the Bounty; it can just as easily take the form of a video urging U.S. military personnel to defy “illegal orders” from their commander in chief.
On Tuesday, six congressional Democrats, each touting their prior military or intelligence service, released a remarkable video calling on troops to refuse what they implied to be President Donald Trump’s unlawful commands. The production had all the hallmarks of a psychological operation lifted straight from the CIA’s playbook. Its purpose was clear: to sow doubt within the ranks and to make service members question the legitimacy of orders delivered through the chain of command. In other words, if your aim is to erode confidence in the current administration, this is exactly how you would do it.
The group included Sens. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), who organized the effort, and Mark Kelly (D-AZ), along with Reps. Chris Deluzio (D-PA), Maggie Goodlander (D-NH), Chrissy Houlahan (D-PA), and Jason Crow (D-CO).
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Taking turns reading from a prepared statement, they told viewers, “We know you are under enormous stress and pressure right now. Americans trust their military. But that trust is at risk.”
“This administration is pitting our uniformed military and intelligence community professionals against American citizens,” they continued — an apparent reference to Trump’s use of the National Guard to protect Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol agents whose efforts to enforce U.S. immigration law have been increasingly obstructed by violent protesters.
“Like us, you all swore an oath to protect and defend this Constitution,” they said. “Right now, the threats to our Constitution aren’t just coming from abroad, but from right here at home.”
“Our laws are clear,” they noted.
“You can refuse illegal orders,” they declared twice, before escalating the message to, “You must refuse illegal orders.”
“No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our Constitution,” they insisted, acknowledging that “it’s a difficult time to be a public servant.”
The video closed with a repeated plea: “Don’t give up.” In a final flourish, Slotkin delivered the parting line of the psyop: “Don’t give up the ship.”
Responding to the video on X, Trump adviser Stephen Miller did not mince words: “Democrat lawmakers are now openly calling for insurrection.”
He later expanded on his remark in an interview with Fox News’s Will Cain, saying, “It is insurrection, plainly, directly. Without question. It’s a general call for rebellion from the CIA and the armed services of the United States by Democrat lawmakers, saying that you have not only the right but the duty and the obligation to defy orders of the commander in chief.”
Many Americans would look at this spectacle and reach the same conclusion.
Perhaps the most striking aspect of the video was its deliberate vagueness. Beyond accusing the Trump administration of “pitting our uniformed military and intelligence community professionals against American citizens,” it offered no specifics.
After swift and intense backlash, Slotkin tried to justify the video by posting footage on Facebook of an old House hearing in which she condemned a suggestion Trump allegedly made to former War Secretary Mark Esper about how to stop violent demonstrators during the 2020 George Floyd riots. Her caption declared, “This is not a hypothetical exercise. During protests in 2020, President Trump wanted the 82nd Airborne sent to Washington, D.C., to, in his words, ‘shoot them in the legs.’”
Axios reported that Esper made the allegation in his 2022 memoir — an allegation that Trump has denied. According to Esper, during the 2020 protests in Washington, D.C., Trump asked him, “Can’t you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something?”
Regardless, Slotkin cast it as both an incontrovertible fact and an explicit “order” from the commander in chief.
In her Wednesday night monologue, Fox News’s Laura Ingraham said these lawmakers are “playing games with one of the gravest outcomes for our country: a military uprising or coup against a duly elected president.”
Ingraham played a clip from a speech Slotkin delivered last month at the Brookings Institution in which she accused Trump of “following the same playbook of almost every authoritarian in history.”
She continued, “From everything we’ve seen so far, the Caribbean strikes, the list of domestic terrorists, military and law enforcement deployments across our American streets, he seems to be laying the groundwork to stay in power.”
“Elections, therefore, could be canceled, or if they happen, he could surround polling places with military and law enforcement to intimidate voters,” she speculated, adding, “Trump could use the IRS to make it impossible for Democrats to fundraise.”
Actually, it was former President Barack Obama who weaponized the IRS to intimidate conservatives, but I digress.
Slotkin’s claims are, of course, absurd. But they are entirely in keeping with the psyop designed to portray Trump as a power-hungry madman clinging desperately to power. In reality, it is the Democrats who are fixated on reclaiming power — and they have made it abundantly clear they will do whatever it takes to achieve that goal.
If any member of Congress truly believes Trump has issued an illegal order, Ingraham noted, they should be willing to cite the exact statute they think he violated.
Finally, it was irresponsible and potentially dangerous for these Democrats to produce this video. An order is not illegal simply because you dislike it, and suggesting that Trump’s orders are unlawful could lead many service members into serious trouble.
RedState‘s Streiff, a retired Army infantry officer, published an especially insightful response last week to a PBS report saying military officers are “lawyering up” over Trump’s orders.
He explained that any order issued by a superior officer, provided it relates to military duty, is presumed lawful.
“You don’t get to demand to see a legal opinion; you really don’t even get to do the theatrical, ‘give it to me in writing,’” Streiff said.
If a service member refuses to carry out an order that is later determined to be lawful, the consequences, he warned, “can be painful. You could be looking at life in prison in a worst-case scenario.”
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Streiff noted that the legal standard for refusing a military order is a “high bar to clear,” concluding, “The bottom line, consulting a lawyer is not, in the case of either blowing up drug cartel boats or invading Venezuela, is not going to give you an out. If you object, have the guts to go into your boss’s office, throw your rank on his desk, and tell him you’re out.”
The release of this video was, by any measure, a reckless choice. It underscores how deeply some Democrats have allowed their obsession with destroying Trump to distort their judgment. What should concern the public is not just the message itself, but the mindset that produced it — a mindset in which hostility has overtaken reason.