So, we’re just moving on from the sedition-execution thing?
It’s quite tidy how the whole thing worked out, in a way.
Democratic members of Congress, recognizing that President Trump would be more than happy to dispatch the military to aid his political objectives, created a video reminding U.S. soldiers, sailors and airmen of the oath that they (including each of those six Democrats, all veterans) had taken to uphold the Constitution and the law. Trump, incensed at the idea that troops were being told to potentially disobey his directives — or, at least, incensed at right-wing covered that leaned on that idea — furiously condemned the legislators on social media.
“SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR,” Trump wrote, referring to the Democrats’ actions, “punishable by
DEATH!”
The Democrats didn’t say what illegal orders they feared. Perhaps they anticipated a call for soldiers to be illegally engaged against the public. Maybe they feared an unauthorized international conflict. Maybe the warning was offered in anticipation of Trump trying to use the military to keep himself or his party in power during or after an election. At the very least, we can say that it was presented out of concern that Trump would leverage his position to call for the use of deadly force against his perceived enemies.
Which Trump, posting on “Truth Social,” promptly demonstrated his interest in doing.
It’s been noted before but bears repeating now that members of the armed forces already swear an oath to do precisely what the Democratic legislators had demanded. Upon joining, they swear an oath to defend the Constitution and to obey the orders of the president — but that latter pledge carries an asterisk: they must obey orders “according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice.” In other words, legal orders.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, a functional extension of the right-wing media conversation into the West Wing, defended Trump’s comments during her press briefing on Thursday by suggesting that some sort of investigation into the legislators was warranted.
“They are literally saying to 1.3 million active duty service members,” she said, “to defy the chain of command, not to follow lawful orders.”
They were literally not saying that, but who’s counting. If the Trump administration depended on accuracy when it announced or called for investigations of its critics, there would be a lot less work for our nation’s grand juries.
What is clear is that Trump’s response was very sincere. This is a man, after all, who less than 48 hours previously had defended the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia’s role in the murder of American journalist Jamal Khashoggi by indicating that Khashoggi was to blame for his own death.
“You’re mentioning somebody that was extremely controversial,” he said on Tuesday in response to a reporter. “A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about. Whether you like him or didn’t like him, things happen.”
Trump has in the past shrugged at the deaths of journalists, a group for which he feels little affection. But the idea that someone who was disliked or controversial had somehow earned execution by a state actor? On Thursday morning, he extended that concept to a half-dozen folks at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.
We’re more than a decade into Trump’s emergence in national politics, a trajectory that began with a wild, off-the-cuff tirade about the putative threat of state-directed criminal immigrants. Back then, other Republicans, believing Trump to be a crank or gadfly, quickly distanced themselves from his rhetoric. But that furious hyperbole captivated the Republican base, and declining to contradict Trump became a loyalty test. So Trump has pushed lower and lower, dragging a decreasingly trepidatious GOP down with him.
The problem is that we’re so used to this pattern that its effects are muted. This is the president of the United States suggesting that members of the opposition party should be killed because they took a relatively tepid stand against his obvious interest in exceeding his executive power. It is not as bad as actually trying and killing them, but it is a multitude of steps past what would have been considered acceptable rhetoric a decade ago. Or even ten months ago, really.
Given those past ten months, it is more than possible that actual charges might be filed by the Attorney General. So, a reminder: It is not the case that criticizing the president is treason or sedition, as he and his allies have often claimed. Nor is reminding members of the military that they took an oath of service to the country and its laws. Trump, though, sees the state as indistinguishable from himself (l’etat, c’est lui) just as he apparently sees the state’s coffers as indistinguishable from his account at Chase Manhattan.
Of course, there’s not much that can be done in the moment about Trump’s comments. Despite the fact that even a large chunk of Republicans now think Congress has ceded too much power to the president, the initial response from House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) — endorsing the idea that some sort of legal probe of the Democrats was warranted — suggests that no accountability will be forthcoming from that chamber. Perhaps this will be an issue in next year’s primaries or midterm elections, but there will be so many other things jockeying for voters’ attention, so many more recent things by then, that it’s likely this will barely warrant mentions by candidates.
The question is just how much further Trump’s rhetoric and actions will have slipped downhill by then.
Photo: Trump in the Oval Office. (Flickr/The White House)