Read to the end of my take because there’s a question there for you, if you choose to. Apologies for the length. I was going to ask a simple one-line question when I started.
Six Democratic lawmakers with military backgrounds released a video telling troops to refuse ‘illegal orders’ right after Trump started using the National Guard domestically. They never named a single actual illegal order, and every service member is already taught this in basic training. The timing and wording made it impossible to read as anything but a political attack on the Trump administration. They knew it would be called traitorous, seditious, or mutinous by half the country, and it would scare the other half into thinking a dictatorship is coming. Whatever their intent, the real effect was to drive another wedge between Americans, make troops question lawful orders for political reasons, and deepen the division they claim to be worried about. In my view, that was reckless and wrong.
By the way, the six lawmakers featured were Senator Elissa Slotkin of Michigan (former CIA analyst), Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona (Navy captain and astronaut), Representative Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania (Air Force Academy graduate and former helicopter pilot), Representative Chris Deluzio of Pennsylvania (Navy veteran who served in Afghanistan), Representative Maggie Goodlander of New Hampshire (former Justice Department national security prosecutor and Navy Reserve officer), and Representative Jason Crow of Colorado (Army Ranger and Iraq/Afghanistan veteran).
The video’s phrasing and timing carries a heavy implication that the Trump administration is issuing (or poised to issue) precisely those kinds of illegal orders it’s warning against, without ever naming specifics or providing examples. Lines like “This administration is pitting our uniformed military against American citizens” and “Threats to our Constitution aren’t just coming from abroad, but from right here at home” are broad enough to feel like a veiled shot at Trump’s recent moves, such as deploying National Guard troops to cities like Chicago and Portland over local objections, or authorizing strikes on suspected narcoterrorism vessels min international waters.
Words like traitor are used, so is seditionist and insurrectionist. If soldiers refused to obey orders based on the video because there was now a question on the legality of the orders based on the video, which word would best describe it for promoting insubordination. The correct charged would ne mutiny by the way. What the six lawmakers did may not illegal, but a lot of people (veterans, active-duty folks, legal experts, and regular citizens) see it as wrong because it injected congressional political theater directly into the chain of command at a moment of high tension. Even if every word they said is technically true (“You must refuse illegal orders”), the context, timing, and tone turned a routine legal reminder into something that looks and feels like a green light for selective obedience based on political disagreement, making it as reckless and corrosive.
Every one of those six lawmakers is a “sophisticated “national-security professional. They’ve all sat through classified briefings, worked in or around the Pentagon or CIA, and understand how quickly a 90-second viral clip can be weaponized in an already polarized environment. As a defense, they will fall back on a clause in the Constitution to defend it as protected speech.
So, in short, they made a deliberate choice to escalate the division rather than lower it leading to another round of Americans screaming “treason” at other Americans. What will happen is that some will view their actions as traitorous, seditionist, insurrectionist, or mutinous, which will create further division in a country already divided, and I believe they knew that.
All that being said, use the word “traitor” interchangeably with seditionist, insurrectionist, and mutineer, and with it, do you feel the meme is correct?