Illegal Orders” Video Sparks Sedition Accusation at the Pentagon

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth in the news for saying he will actually go after United States Senator Mark Kelly for the crime of sedition, believe it or not. So here's the situation. The Defense Secretary is legally still the name. It's not the war Secretary. That's just a pretend name. The Defense Secretary called the senator's remarks urging troops not to follow illegal orders to be, quote, despicable, reckless and false. Okay, what's the real message here? Pete Hegsett is essentially saying the Nuremberg defense should work in America. Now, at Nuremberg, soldier after soldier said, I was just following orders. Wasn't my idea to kill Jews or 6 million other people either. And it's considered by everyone to be despicable. If you are a soldier in the United States or any, any country where people honor and respect human dignity, you have the right to ignore illegal orders. That's all that Senator Mark Kelly was saying. He wasn't saying, oh, if you don't like the President or the color, the fake orange color of his skin or his bad hair, you don't have to follow his orders. That's not what Senator Mark Kelly said. What he said and five other Democratic members of the Congress who've all served in the military or in the intelligence fields said is reminding soldiers, as they are reminded in basic training, that they have the right to say no to illegal orders. So if your sergeant or a general came to you and said, just shoot every third red haired lady who walks by on the street, you would have the right to say, no, I'm not going to do that. That is patently illegal. There's no plot, plausible, plausible rationale for that. Any sane, moral person who's had any sense of history of the 20th century realizes you can't give an individual soldier the option of saying, hey, I was just following rules. Don't judge me. You are judged. Soldiers are going to be judged by history and by courts of law. Now, Senator Kelly was selected out of the six members of Congress who made this video, which we spoke to you about last week. He's the only one singled out because of a legal loophole. He's a retired Navy captain, an astronaut. That's right. He risked his life not just the battle, not in the battlefields, but up in space. He appeared in this video with five other lawmakers. But since he is retired military, he's still actively under their jurisprudence. He was, he was in essentially his whole career, so he could be called back to active duty at some point. And because of that, he's under this this military law, essential. But I gotta tell you, this is nothing but Pete Hegseth strutting again, as is his wont, beating his chest, showing people I am the tough guy who can pander to Donald Trump better than anyone. These senators and members of Congress had the goal, the unmitigated goal, to make us look in front of soldier. We don't like that. So rather than have a debate or an honest disagreement, we're just going to say it's seditious. And as Trump did last week, Trump said they should be put to death. Now, by the way, I have to point out, this was condemned when Trump said last week. And what Hegseth is saying this week has been condemned not by the MSNBC crowd or the Miz now crowd, not by far left radicals, but by centrist and Republicans and by mainstream members of the military establishment, because they understand if, if a military is going to have authority in a society run by civilians, there have to be some norms that transcend the military. And one of them is, as an individual, a soldier cannot be expected to follow an order that is patently illegal. Why is that relevant today? Well, because this president is routinely asking soldiers to do things that are condemned by the United nations and condemned by international ethics and by anyone who has a respect for international law. So, quick recap. What's happening is the president wants to be the tough guy against Venezuela, doesn't like some of the leaders down there. Well, I don't like them either. Thinks that they deal with drugs. I'm sure they do. But then makes the leap of saying, well, here's a boat, it's close to Venezuela, or it came from Venezuela, might be a drug dealer. Rather than capture them, do research, have a tribunal, bring them into international court of law, make a case against them, let's just kill them right now. Let's just bomb them and kill them. Now, this has happened repeatedly in recent times, and it's not Trump flying the drone or going down there and pushing buttons or pulling a gun. It is members of the military doing it. Now, it's true that Senator Mark Kelly and the other Democrats didn't say which laws exactly they think were illegal. You could make the case they were guilty of being ambiguous, but last time I checked, you don't put someone to death for being ambiguous. In the United States, it's not a crime to be ambiguous. Now, it's especially rich from this crew talking about sedition, given the seditious acts, the traitorous acts that did happen on January 6, 2021. So it's not that sedition never happens. It's not the traitorous activities never happen. It's not that no one ever suggests, you know, maybe hang Mike Pence. But the person who suggested that don't hear Pete Hegseth saying, that person should be given the death penalty. So Trump wrote on his social media site, hang them, George Washington Wood. So this is Pete Hegseth saying, hey, boss man says this, I'm going to top him. I'm going to go even further and I'm going to just mess with this guy. Senator Mark Kelly, who does he think he is? Just because he served his whole career in the United States military honorably? Just because he risked his life flying into space, Just because he had to stand by ably, why his own wife, the former member of Congress, Gabby Giffords, was nearly paid with her life when a deranged madman shot her. Just because he's done all those things, well, that doesn't give him the right to state facts in a truthful way that make us look bad. He doesn't deserve that. So that's what's happened. Fortunately, I'm very happy to see that this is not breaking down as a partisan issue because there are Republicans who have condemned Pete Hexeth and Trump administration who support what these Democrats have done. Mark Kelly, now, again, I'm here as a sane, sensible centrist. I don't care what party you're in. At some point there's going to be somebody you care about, a family member, you, your son or daughter, grandchild of yours who could serve in the US Military. And there could be a president who represents a party that you don't like and you don't like him or her at some point. And they could give an order that really defies all rationale, all sense of justice, all sense of human dignity. And you're going to want that loved one of yours to have the right to say, no, I'm not following that illegal order because that is in fact, what America is based on. If you want to conserve the values of our military, you have to believe that the values of our military are not the values of the Third Reich. We do not allow people to say, hey, just following orders. I didn't question whether it was patently illegal or immoral or a war crime. I just did it because I was following orders. That's not the way our country works. It is the way other countries have worked. Didn't turn out very well. I'm T.J. walker. This is a special holiday edition of Filtered. I will be coming back to you regular live times later this week once we get through the holidays. But I am traveling today. I hope you're getting ready to enjoy some turkey if you're here in the United States or whatever your favorite treat is. If you're a vegan, whether you're eating tofu, whatever it is, I hope you are enjoying yourself and having some good family time.