Dear MAGA, Please Continue Attacking Mark Kelly. It Only Makes Him Stronger.
- john raymond
- 2 hours ago
- 6 min read
The more you attack Mark Kelly for his “illegal orders” video, the more clearly you explain to the country who you are—and why people like him are necessary. Your fury is not weakening him; it is sharpening the contrast between a constitutional republic and a personality cult.
Every new denunciation, investigation, and threat against him simply rebroadcasts his core message: troops answer to the law and the Constitution, not to President Trump personally.
This is a fight you cannot win in the long run—and you are the fool ones choosing it.
What actually happened in the Kelly video
In the video’s short ninety seconds, six Democratic lawmakers with military or intelligence backgrounds—Mark Kelly, Elissa Slotkin, Jason Crow, Chrissy Houlahan, Maggie Goodlander, and Chris Deluzio—looked into the camera and reminded service members and intel officers of one basic fact: you can refuse unlawful orders, and in some cases you must. They warned that threats to the Constitution can come from inside the country and that the oath is to law, not to any individual.
There is no call to disobey “Trump’s orders” as such. No scenario. No call for mutiny. Just a reminder of the Nuremberg principle and the Uniform Code of Military Justice’s own language about lawful versus unlawful commands.
Kelly has since defended the video as “non-controversial” and rooted in basic legal obligations: troops are already trained that they must not carry out illegal orders.
Your side’s reaction
President Trump called the video “seditious behavior” and amplified posts saying the lawmakers were traitors who deserved death, even reposting a call for them to be hanged.
The Pentagon, under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, responded by opening a formal investigation of Kelly, publicly floating the idea of recalling him to duty for possible court-martial—an extraordinary threat against a sitting senator.
The FBI has now stepped in as well. Multiple outlets confirm that federal agents are seeking interviews with all six lawmakers about the video, after President Trump labeled their message sedition “punishable by DEATH.”
On right-wing media and social platforms, the line is consistent:
The video is portrayed as a call to insubordination.
Reminding troops of their duty to refuse unlawful orders is framed as a direct attack on President Trump and the chain of command.
Kelly and his colleagues are painted as traitors to the troops and enemies of “law and order.”
This is all upside for Kelly
Why? Because the law and the experts are not on your side.
Military law is explicit: Article 92 of the UCMJ criminalizes disobedience of lawful orders. The adjective is not decorative—“lawful” is a real constraint. An unlawful order is not magically protected by the chain of command.
After World War II, not just America but the entire Western legal order adopted the principle that “just following orders” is no defense for war crimes or gross constitutional violations.
Legal scholars from multiple institutions—Villanova, Penn, Berkeley and others—have already explained, on record, that what Kelly and the others said is squarely within that framework.
Time’s survey of experts put it plainly: urging refusal of unlawful orders “aligns with the Uniform Code of Military Justice and free speech rights” and does not come close to any plausible definition of sedition.
PolitiFact’s review is the same: President Trump’s claim of “sedition” is not supported by the facts or by statute.
So each time you repeat your accusation, two things happen:
The public hears again that Kelly is standing on the side of law, history, and Nuremberg.
You remind everyone that President Trump is trying to criminalize the idea that his orders could ever be illegal.
That is not a great contrast for you.
Even some conservatives are breaking ranks
You have also managed to fracture your own coalition. Newsweek reports that Republican Rep. Don Bacon—an Air Force veteran—called the Pentagon’s threat to recall Kelly “amateur hour once again,” criticizing the move as politicizing the military over a video that simply restates existing obligations.
That matters. It signals that there is still a boundary inside the right: a line between MAGA cult-loyalty and older, institutional conservative instincts about civilian control and lawful orders. Every time you escalate the campaign against Kelly, you force people on your own side to choose—which camp they are in.
From the Raymond Method vantage point
Under Pillar One—Regime Security—the logic is straightforward: a president who expects to issue dubious or outright unlawful commands needs a military conditioned to obey first and ask questions never. A reminder like Kelly’s is a threat, not because it is wrong, but because it is effective: it makes the legal boundary salient exactly where President Trump wants blind obedience.
Under Pillar Two—Asymmetric Warfare—your overreaction is itself the signal. A short, legally accurate video is met with maximum retaliation: presidential calls for death, Pentagon investigation, FBI intimidation.
This is classic asymmetric deterrence: make an example out of a few to scare the rest. But in the information environment of 2025, it backfires. The more disproportionate the response, the louder the original message echoes.
Pillar Three—the Byzantine Traitor-General paradigm—highlights something else: captured institutions inside the system doing the work of an aspiring autocrat. When the Pentagon and the FBI are pushed into investigating lawmakers for affirming legal duties, they are not protecting the Constitution; they are operating as traitor-generals within the democratic system, turning the regime’s tools against those upholding the law.
If you zoom out to the broader strategic picture—President Trump’s consistent pattern of policies and rhetoric that align with Kremlin interests—this all fits a familiar pattern: weaken internal checks, intimidate legal opposition, and ensure that when the moment of real crisis comes, the armed organs of the state answer to the ruler rather than to law. The Kelly video is a small but direct obstacle to that project. Your rage confirms its relevance.
Why your attacks make Kelly stronger
First, visibility. Without President Trump’s tantrum and your media echo chamber, this clip would have been another niche message to those already paying attention. By branding it “seditious” and demanding extreme punishment, you guaranteed that mainstream outlets—AP, Guardian, PBS, Al Jazeera, and others—would cover it, quote it, and re-explain its content to millions of people who never would have seen it.
Every such article repeats the same core line: U.S. troops must refuse illegal orders. You cannot suppress that idea while you are the one blasting it through the megaphone.
Second, framing. Kelly now stands not just as a Democratic senator from Arizona, but as the man President Trump is trying to punish for saying the military must follow the law.
The more you hammer him, the more voters see a contrast between a calm, ex-Navy officer explaining standard doctrine and an angry, authoritarian president and his allies screaming for death penalties and court-martials. That contrast will age badly for you and well for Kelly.
Third, coalition-building. Your overreach is pushing non-MAGA conservatives, veterans, and institutionalists toward Kelly’s side of the argument even if they do not share his party or ideology.
They do not have to become Democrats; they just have to say, “Whatever this is, it is not how a constitutional republic behaves.” You are helping them say that out loud.
Fourth, precedent. If you were somehow to succeed—if Kelly were actually dragged into a court-martial fight—it would only magnify the stakes and the scrutiny. The legal question would be crystal: is reminding troops of their duty to the law itself illegal? You would be inviting a showdown you are not equipped to win on the merits, because your position requires pretending that “illegal order” is a subversive category whenever it is attached to President Trump.
What this means going forward
For MAGA, the rational play—if your goal were regime survival—would be to downplay the video. Ignore it, mock it in passing, move on. Instead, driven by instinct and grievance, you have chosen to turn it into a loyalty test and a national debate.
Under a minimax reading of enemy intent, that tells me something important: you cannot tolerate any narrative in which the military’s loyalty to the Constitution is more salient than its loyalty to President Trump. That is the glaring weakness you are accidentally advertising.
For everyone else, the lesson is equally clear. Mark Kelly has given the country a simple, durable line: you can refuse illegal orders. Your attacks have now engraved that line deeper into public consciousness than any polite panel discussion or law review article ever could have done.
So yes—please continue attacking Kelly and the video. Keep calling it sedition when someone reminds the troops that their oath is to the Constitution. Keep threatening FBI interviews and Pentagon investigations over a legally correct, ninety-second civics lesson.
You are not making Mark Kelly smaller. You are proving exactly why people like him are needed, and you are telling the rest of us something we must not forget:
When reminding soldiers to follow the law is treated as treason, the danger is not the soldiers and not the law. The danger is the regime that fears both.
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