Trump’s Vile Attack on Mark Kelly Backfires as Harsh Retort Goes Viral

THE DAILY BLAST with Greg Sargent

The New Republic

News, Politics

4.4 • 800 Ratings

🗓️ 7 January 2026

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Last year, Senator Mark Kelly and five other Democrats posted a video with a stark message: Military service members and officials are not obliged to carry out illegal orders. This infuriated Donald Trump, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is reprehensibly bringing disciplinary action against him as a retired Navy man. But this is backfiring: Kelly has now offered a striking new response in a second video, and it’s powerful stuff. Kelly speaks emotionally about his family’s commitment to the military and to the country, and absolutely humiliates Trump over his disregard for military service and disdain free speech. Indeed, the attack on Kelly is likely to fail and will continue making Trump look worse. We talked to legal expert Leah Litman, author of the book Lawless, about the Supreme Court. She walks us through the legal ins-and-outs of this dispute, explains why the case against Kelly represents its own abuse of the process, and reflects on how this saga captures Trumpworld’s deeper contempt for public service. Looking for More from the DSR Network? Click Here: https://linktr.ee/deepstateradio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:46.5	I'm your host, Greg Sargent.
1:02.3	Last year, Senator Mark Kelly and five other Democrats posted a video with a stark message.
1:07.1	Military service members and officials are not obliged to carry out illegal orders.
1:12.7	This infuriated Donald Trump, and now Defense Secretary Pete Hegeseth is taking the extraordinary step of bringing disciplinary action against him as a retired Navy man. Mark Kelly
1:19.6	offered a striking response to all this in a second video, which is about his own service
1:25.0	and about Trump's lack of it. It's very powerful stuff.
1:29.3	Here's our question. What if Trump is giving illegal orders to the military? How do we make
1:34.5	that part of the discussion? Today we're working through all this with legal expert Leah Littman,
1:39.5	who's great at puncturing Trump's lawlessness. Leah, nice to have you on.
	...

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