Trump charges six Democratic lawmakers with treason, "punishable by death": "George Washington would hang them"

United States President Donald Trump yesterday charged six Democratic lawmakers with high treason, "punishable by death," after the lawmakers — all veterans of the armed forces and the intelligence community — called on members of the US military to respect the Constitution and refuse "illegal orders," the Associated Press (AP) agency reported today.

The 90-second video was first posted early Tuesday by Michigan Senator Elise Slotkin's X account. It features six lawmakers — Slotkin, Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, and Congressmen Jason Crowe, Chris DeLuzio, Maggie Goodlander, and Chrissy Hoolahan — addressing members of the U.S. military, who Slotkin acknowledges are "under tremendous stress and pressure these days."

"The American people need you to stand up for our laws and our Constitution," Slotkin wrote in the post.

Along with the Michigan senator, the other lawmakers who appear in the video are considered potential future candidates for higher office, and now, thanks to the video's wide visibility, they have further raised their political profiles.

Trump retweeted others' messages about the video yesterday and amplified them with his own words. It was another point of incendiary political rhetoric that has at times been a hallmark of his administration, as well as part of his MAGA (Make America Great Again) base.

Some Democratic politicians have accused him of acting like a king and trying to divert attention from the soon-to-be-released dossier on disgraced financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, according to the AP.

What the Democrats said in the video

With clips of members' dialogue edited one after the other, the lawmakers introduce themselves and talk about themselves. They then say that the Trump administration is "distinguishing our uniformed military from the American people."

They call on members of the military to "refuse illegal orders" and "stand up for our laws."

The lawmakers end the video with a message to military members: "Don't give up the ship," a phrase from the War of 1812 that is attributed to an order from a dying U.S. Navy captain to his crew.

Although lawmakers did not specify the specific circumstances in the video, it was released at a time when the Trump administration continues to try to deploy National Guard units to American cities for various tasks, although some have already been withdrawn and others have been stopped in court, according to the AP.

Are American soldiers allowed to refuse orders?

Soldiers, especially uniformed commanders, have a special obligation to refuse an order that is illegal, if they judge it to be so.

However, while commanders have military lawyers in their headquarters to consult with when making such an assessment, ordinary soldiers, who are tasked with carrying out those orders, are rarely in such a position.

Widely accepted legal precedents establish that merely "following orders" — colloquially known as the "Nuremberg defense," as it was unsuccessfully used by high-ranking Nazi officials to justify their actions under Adolf Hitler — does not absolve soldiers of responsibility.

However, the U.S. military code of law, known as the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), provides for the punishment of soldiers for disobeying orders if they are shown to be lawful. Soldiers can be held criminally liable under Article 90 of the UCMJ, for willful disobedience of an order from a superior officer, as well as under Article 92, for failure to obey orders.

How Trump and others reacted

On Thursday, Trump shared an article about the video on social media, adding his comment that it was "really bad and dangerous for our country."

"TRAITORIAL BEHAVIOR BY TRAITORS!!!" Trump continued. "PUT THEM IN PRISON???"

He called for the arrest and trial of the deputies, adding in a separate announcement that this was "TRAITORIAL BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH."

Trump also shared more than a dozen comments from other accounts criticizing Democrats, including one that read, "HANG THEM, GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD DO IT!!"

Asked during a White House briefing on Thursday about Trump's messages, spokeswoman Caroline Levitt instead focused on the Democrats' message, which she argued "may be punishable by law."

Levitt added that any call to "bypass the chain of command, to disobey lawful orders" is "a very dangerous thing that current members of Congress are doing and they should be held accountable for, and that's exactly what the president wants to see."

Democrats were quick to react to Trump's words, with Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer warning in a Senate floor speech that the president was "lighting a match in a country soaked in political gasoline."

House Speaker Mike Johnson said he did not believe Trump was calling for violence in his social media posts, but rather that he was merely "defining a crime," calling the Democrats' video "grossly inappropriate."

"Think about what a threat this is to our national security and what it means for our institution," Johnson added.

Trump allies have reacted sharply to the video. On Wednesday, on Fox News, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller called the message "a rebellion — clear, direct, without a shadow of a doubt" and said it represented "a general call to rebellion by the CIA and the U.S. military, sent by Democratic lawmakers."

On Network X, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called the video "stage four of TDS" on Tuesday, alluding to "Trump Derangement Syndrome" — a term Trump uses to describe voters who are so angry with and against him that they are unable to see any good in what he does.

The Steady State, which describes itself as "a network of over 300 national and homeland security experts who advocate for strong and principled politics, the rule of law, and democracy," wrote in a post on Sabtek on Thursday that the lawmakers' call "is just a reaffirmation of what every officer and every soldier already knows: illegal orders can and should be refused. This is not political opinion. This is doctrine."

Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell disputed the theory that illegal orders were being issued.

"Our military follows orders, and our civilians issue lawful orders. We love the Constitution. These politicians are out of their minds," Parnell told the AP yesterday.