This week, Donald Trump accused six Democratic lawmakers of sedition and said their actions were “punishable by death” after they posted a video urging service members to refuse unlawful orders. Amid a surge in political violence in the U.S., Ali Velshi warns that Trump is publicly voice and encouraging authoritarianism, and the violence that comes with it.
Not even Abraham Lincoln, who faced armed traitors attempting to overthrow our union, called for the execution of his political opponents. George Washington never hanged nor even harmed any of the 900 captured enemy forces after the battle of Trenton in 1776. And furthermore, criticism is not sedition.
It is protected under U. S. military law for service members to refuse unlawful orders — that is orders which call for committing a crime or violating the Constitution. Armed services members swear to “support and defend the Constitution,” they don’t swear fidelity to the Commander in Chief. If the Commander in Chief gives an lawful order, it does not become lawful simply because the president issued it. That isn’t how our democracy works.
Furthermore, Velshi points out, the legal debates are besides the point when the subject, the President of the United States, is a rage poster throwing tantrums on social media whenever he is criticized and inciting violence against his critics.
“This is your leader, the leader of a global superpower, lashing out with childlike emotional maturity, throwing a tantrum, except that his tantrum carries the full weight of presidential power, and that has very real and immediate consequences,” Velshi states.
Heightened political violence is dangerous, and encouragement of extremism by the Trump Regime in response to criticism has terrible consequences for democracy.
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