Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., appeared on MS NOW’s “The Rachel Maddow Show” on Monday, where he responded to the Pentagon’s announcement that it has opened a formal review into allegations of misconduct over a video calling on service members to “refuse illegal orders.”
On Monday, the Pentagon announced its investigation into Kelly, a retired Navy captain, and said it may call the senator back to active duty to face court-martial proceedings or other administrative actions under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ).
When asked by Maddow about the Pentagon’s investigation, Kelly said, “Well, Rachel, I said something that was pretty simple and non-controversial, and that was that members of the military should follow the law. And in response to that, Donald Trump said, I should be executed, I should be hanged. I should be prosecuted.”
Kelly added that President Donald Trump “said something about go get them,” suggesting that the president plans on “sending a mob to round me and the other folks up.”
“This is — I think it says a lot more about him than it says about me. He doesn’t want accountability. But Rachel, I’m not going to be silenced. I’m not going to be intimidated,” he asserted.
Maddow then asked which “specific, potentially illegal orders” Kelly and his colleagues were concerned about when they decided to record a video urging service members to refuse them.
“You don’t want to wait for your kid to get hit by a car before you tell them to look both ways. It’s pretty simple,” Kelly said. “And if you go back to 2016, Donald Trump on a debate stage talking about, you know, some action that he was going to take, he was reminded by the moderator that that would be illegal, that the military wouldn’t be able to follow those orders. And his response, Donald Trump’s response was, ‘The military would not refuse my orders.’”
Kelly continued, claiming that Trump talked about “shooting people — citizens of this country — in the legs,” specifically “protesters,” and added that “thankfully, Mark Esper, Mark Milley explained to him that that would not be a good idea.”
“Now he’s talking about the insurrection act, sending troops to more cities, using U.S. cities as training grounds, and U.S. citizens for training of the United States military. So, Rachel, we wanted to do something pretty simple here. We wanted to just remind folks that they need to comply with the law and be reminded and also explain to members of the military that we have their backs, that we know what’s going on,” he continued. “It’s part of our job, accountability over the federal government. And this is the response we get. He told the world that we should be hanged.”
