United States (US) president Donald Trump on Saturday said six Democrats involved in a video calling on military officers to refuse illegal commands “should be in jail”.
The Republican leader’s remarks came after he accused the Democrat lawmakers on Friday of “seditious behaviour, punishable by death”.
Democrats slammed Trump’s comments as “absolutely vile” threats against the six senators and representatives, all of whom have served in the military or intelligence community.
Trump took to social media on Saturday night, writing: “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 okay.”
He said the Democrats’ message was “sedition at the highest level” and that “there can be no other interpretation of what they said”.
The video posted on social media Friday called on the military to “refuse illegal orders” and featured Arizona’s Mark Kelly, Michigan’s Elissa Slotkin, along with Jason Crow of Colorado, Chris Deluzio and Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania, and Maggie Goodlander of New Hampshire.
They did not specify which orders they were referring to, but Trump has ordered the National Guard into multiple US cities, in many cases against the wishes of local officials, in a bid to bring alleged rampant unrest under control.
Abroad, Trump has also ordered strikes on a series of alleged drug-smuggling vessels in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean that have left more than 80 people dead and which experts say are illegal.
Trump has alluded to the death penalty on previous occasions.
In 2023, former US military officer Mark Milley told a journalist he had secretly called his Chinese counterpart after the 6 January 2021 riots at the US Capitol to reassure Beijing that the United States remained “stable” and had no intention to attack China.
Trump subsequently wrote on social media that “in times gone by, the punishment would have been death!”.
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