Dear GOP, If You Refuse to Act, Trump’s Attacks on Democrats Will Land on You in Time

President Trump is telling you, in public and in real time, exactly what kind of system he is building and where you fit in it. When a president calls six Democratic veterans “traitors” who have engaged in “seditious behavior, punishable by death” because they reminded the military that illegal orders must be refused, that is not a policy dispute. That is regime-security language from an aspiring autocrat, directed at anyone who might one day say no.

At the same time, when he turns on one of his most slavish allies—Marjorie Taylor Greene—calling her a “ranting lunatic,” “Lightweight Congresswoman,” and “Traitor,” and she responds by saying his rhetoric has triggered waves of death threats against her, you are watching the enforcement arm of that regime in motion.

The message is simple: loyalty protects you only until the moment it doesn’t. After that, his mob becomes your problem.

If you are a Republican officeholder telling yourself that this will somehow stop at Democrats, or at Greene, or at Thomas Massie, you are lying to yourself. Under the logic President Trump has chosen, everyone outside his immediate personal protection racket is ultimately disposable. That includes you.

I. What just happened this week

On Tuesday, six Democratic lawmakers—Senators Elissa Slotkin and Mark Kelly, and Representatives Jason Crow, Maggie Goodlander, Chris Deluzio and Chrissy Houlahan—released a video aimed directly at the U.S. military and intelligence community. Their core message was not radical: U.S. law is clear, they said; servicemembers must refuse illegal orders and stand by the Constitution.

On Thursday, President Trump responded by calling these Democrats “traitors,” accusing them of “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” and reposting content that framed their conduct as a capital offense.

His own press secretary then tried to walk this back under questioning, insisting that he does not literally want lawmakers executed even as she attacked the Democrats for supposedly undermining the chain of command.

This is the tell. The video did not tell troops to defy lawful authority; it told them to uphold the actual law when illegal orders come. That is precisely what any constitutional military is obligated to do. The only person threatened by this message is a president who intends to issue orders that he himself knows may be unlawful—whether that involves domestic repression, misusing the National Guard, or refusing obligations abroad.

In parallel, we have watched President Trump’s White House run a months-long campaign to prevent, delay, or dilute congressional efforts to force the release of Justice Department files on Jeffrey Epstein. Despite public claims of having “nothing to hide,” senior aides privately lobbied Senate leadership for amendments and redactions, tried to frame delay as “responsible oversight,” and even slow-walked the swearing-in of a new Democratic member of the House to buy more time.

That effort failed. The House voted by an overwhelming bipartisan margin—near-unanimous, with a single Republican no vote—to compel release of the DOJ’s Epstein files.

The Senate then agreed to pass the bill, and Trump ultimately signed it only after it became clear that his own party would defy him if he tried to stand in the way.

The critical fact for you, as a Republican, is this: that House vote was only possible because four Republican members—Thomas Massie, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, and Nancy Mace—joined Democrats on a discharge petition to drag the bill to the floor against the wishes of Trump’s team.

Massie went on national television and said the quiet part out loud to his own caucus: if they blocked the release, history would record them as having “voted to protect pedophiles,” and Trump would not be able to protect them from that stain in 2030 or beyond.

He also warned that Trump’s new “investigations” into Democrats’ Epstein ties looked like a last-ditch smokescreen to keep the files from ever seeing daylight.

Trump’s response to this defiance was not rational policy debate. He publicly turned on Greene—one of his most loyal foot soldiers—calling her “wacky,” a “ranting lunatic,” “Lightweight Congresswoman,” a “Traitor” and a “disgrace” to the Republican Party while hinting he would back a primary challenger in her district.

Greene, for her part, says private security firms are warning her about threats triggered by his rhetoric, and she explicitly accuses him of intimidation tied to the Epstein vote.

At the same time, Trump has used his Justice Department and loyalists like FHFA director Bill Pulte to target political opponents and critics with investigations—explicitly making federal power an extension of personal grievance and loyalty.

Put these two tracks together: a president calling for death-penalty punishment of opposition lawmakers for stating black-letter law about illegal orders, and a president unleashing mob and institutional pressure against Republicans who cross him on a sex-abuse and blackmail scandal that has haunted his orbit for decades.

That is the architecture you are living under...

II. The Raymond Method: what this tells you about his intent

Apply Pillar One of the Raymond Method: Regime Security Is the Prime Directive. For President Trump, there is no higher value than his personal survival—legal, financial, political. The state, the party, and the base are instruments for that one objective. Once you accept this, his behavior becomes fully legible.

The Epstein files fight was a regime-security fight. The risk is not only what the files may or may not say about Trump personally, but what they might reveal about the donor class, foreign allies, and kompromat networks that underwrite his power. As Representative Massie correctly observed, Trump appears to be using new “investigations” into Democrats’ Epstein links as a smokescreen—if there is an “ongoing investigation” then, conveniently, certain documents cannot be released.

That is not the move of a man with “nothing to hide”; it is the move of a man trying to preserve control over who lives and dies inside the blackmail system.

Pillar Two: Asymmetric Warfare. Trump does not need formal decrees or written orders to lash enemies. He uses social media mobs, stochastic terrorism, and DOJ-style purges to send messages. Calling Democratic veterans “traitors” who have engaged in “seditious behavior, punishable by death” for reminding troops of their duty to refuse illegal orders is a textbook asymmetric move.

It signals to the security services that any resistance to him personally will be reframed as treason, while preserving just enough deniability via a press-secretary walk-back.

Likewise, his online assault on Greene is not about one congresswoman. It is a loyalty demonstration to everyone else: if he will do this to one of his fiercest MAGA warriors for signing a petition on Epstein transparency, imagine what he will do to a more moderate Republican who questions him on NATO, Ukraine, or domestic crackdowns.

Pillar Three: Byzantine Traitor-General. In strategic terms, President Trump has positioned himself as the traitor-general within the Western alliance system—the man inside the gate who aligns his moves with Kremlin interests while insisting he is “only” pursuing America First.

That frame makes sense of why he is so threatened by any assertion that U.S. troops must refuse illegal orders: a military that retains independent loyalty to the Constitution is the single most dangerous obstacle to an internal traitor-general attempting to subvert treaty obligations, sabotage Ukraine, or use force domestically.

When he calls constitutional guardrails “seditious” and fantasizes about executing elected opponents, you should not ask what he says he wants from you tomorrow. You should ask what kind of orders he is planning to give when he has normalized the idea that obedience to the law is treason. Under the minimax corollary of the Raymond Method—when your proven enemy makes a move, assume it is designed to harm you—this is the only safe interpretation.

III. Why your current silence is suicidal

Most of you in the Republican Party are playing for time. You assume you can ride out the storm: nod along publicly, keep your head down on the worst days, and maybe—maybe—do a late-career profile-in-courage speech once Trump is weakened or gone. That is the story you tell yourselves.

The problem is that Trump’s system keeps perfect memory even if you don’t. The vote on the Epstein files is now a matter of permanent public record. In Massie’s words, that record “will last longer than Donald Trump’s presidency,” and anyone who opposed release will be remembered as having “voted to protect pedophiles.”

You can whine about context all you like; history will not care.

The same is true of this week’s death-penalty rhetoric. You are letting a sitting president float the execution of senators and representatives for telling soldiers to follow the law, with only the weakest of rebukes—Lindsey Graham calling the reaction “over the top” while attacking the Democrats’ video, others shrugging “that’s his opinion.” You are normalizing the language an aspiring dictator must use before he reaches for truly catastrophic orders.

When you stay silent now, you are not buying safety; you are issuing a standing invitation. You are telling him, and his base, and his future prosecutors: “If I ever cross you, use my own cowardice against me. Show the footage of my silence. Play back my votes on Epstein, my acquiescence when you called for executing senators, my applause lines at rallies. Let the mob judge me.”

Remember also that Trump burns through loyalists. This is not speculation; it is his record. He turned on Jeff Sessions, James Mattis, Bill Barr, and Mike Pence the moment they showed even minimal independence, and has now purged the remaining special-counsel prosecutors who once tried to hold him accountable—via a Justice Department firing spree ordered out of the White House personnel office and openly defended by his press secretary.

In his own words and actions, Trump has made clear that the only function of the Justice Department now is to “faithfully implement the president’s agenda,” not to uphold neutral law.

If that is how he treats attorneys general, defense secretaries, and vice-presidents, what makes you think a random back-bench House member or junior senator will fare better once you fall out of favor?

IV. What “refusing to act” really means

Refusing to act is not neutral. In the ecosystem President Trump is building, your silence is an affirmative resource he uses to tighten his grip. Every time you decline to condemn language about executing political opponents, you move the Overton window one click further toward open authoritarianism.

Every time you let Trump turn a bipartisan transparency vote about his serial child abuse into a loyalty test, you entangle yourself more deeply in a blackmail-adjacent system that will outlive him.

Acting, in this context, does not require that you become a Democrat or suddenly embrace policies you despise. It means drawing bright, non-negotiable lines around the most basic constitutional principles:

• That reminding troops of their duty to refuse illegal orders is not sedition.

• That no president may hint at death-penalty punishment for legislative speech without facing unified, public condemnation.

• That investigations into Epstein’s network must not be weaponized into an excuse to keep files sealed.

• That the Justice Department and the military exist to serve the law, not the personal security of one man.

If you cannot say those things aloud—now, when it still might matter—then you are not just failing your oaths. You are volunteering for a future in which the very weapons you are helping Trump sharpen today will ultimately be aimed at you, your staff, your families, and whatever fragments of your reputation remain.

Under Pillar One, a regime-security actor does not let inconvenient witnesses walk away unscathed. Under Pillar Two, he keeps the threat environment hot so no one knows when the next wave of harassment or prosecution will land. Under Pillar Three, he coordinates those moves in ways that serve the interests of hostile foreign powers eager to see our institutions hollowed out. That is the system you are enabling when you look at this week’s events and choose to do nothing.

The bill will come due. The only real question left for you, as Republicans, is simple: when President Trump finally decides that you, personally, are now more useful as an enemy than as a friend, what will you wish you had said and done when he first started talking about executing senators and punishing transparency as treason?

Because by then, your silence today will already have answered for you.

---

https://bsky.app/profile/johnrraymond.bsky.social