Trump goes on late-night social media rant demanding Democrats who spoke out on military justice be jailed
Donald Trump issued another pair of calls for Democrats who spoke out against illegal orders to the military to be jailed late Saturday evening as he battles a sinking public image and unprecedented resistance within his own party on the Hill.
The president delivered his latest statements in the form of all-caps tirades on Truth Social, where he defended the supposed legal basis for charging members of the opposing political party with treason or seditious conspiracy. But even in doing so, he seemed to back away explicitly from calls for their executions, something he’d raised as a threat only days before.
But the president was clearly irked by the refusal of congressional Republicans to join him, and used one Truth Social post to weakly insist that America’s legal scholars were on his side. The episode marked just his latest crash-out stemming from the original issue: A video, posted by congressional Democratic members who served in the military, urging the commanders of the armed services to follow their constitutional duty to refuse illegal orders from the White House or Defense Department.
“MANY GREAT LEGAL SCHOLARS AGREE THAT THE DEMOCRAT TRAITORS THAT TOLD THE MILITARY TO DISOBEY MY ORDERS, AS PRESIDENT, HAVE COMMITTED A CRIME OF SERIOUS PROPORTION!” he argued.
In a second post ten minutes earlier, just before midnight, he wrote: “THE TRAITORS THAT TOLD THE MILITARY TO DISOBEY MY ORDERS SHOULD BE IN JAIL RIGHT NOW, NOT ROAMING THE FAKE NEWS NETWORKS TRYING TO EXPLAIN THAT WHAT THEY SAID WAS OK. IT WASN’T, AND NEVER WILL BE!”
He added that Democrats like Sen. Elissa Slotkin and Rep. Chris Deluzio who appeared in the video had committed “SEDITION AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL”, before noting incorrectly: “AND SEDITION IS A MAJOR CRIME.”
Sedition itself is not a defined crime in the U.S. criminal code. The applicable charge is seditious conspiracy, a similar-sounding charge that requires prosecutors to prove that an organized conspiracy exists aimed at overthrowing or otherwise harming the federal government.
This is a breaking news report. More to follow…
