Jon Stewart Grills Mark Kelly on ‘Illegal Orders’ Stance: ‘So Are the Boat Strikes Illegal?’

Jon Stewart grilled Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ) on his “illegal orders” stance Monday night, as the Democrat struggled to say whether President Donald Trump’s strikes on alleged drug trafficking boats would obligate, in his view, a U.S. service member to refuse orders.

Kelly appeared on The Daily Show hours after Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth acted to strip the retired Navy captain and former astronaut of his rank and reduce his military pension.

The move came after an investigation into a video in which Kelly appeared alongside other Democratic lawmakers, urging those in the military not to comply with any potentially illegal orders issued by the Trump administration.

Discussing the video, Stewart asked Kelly if there was anything he would do differently “in retrospect.” The senator said the video was “right” and the message was “important.”

The host countered that the video appeared to put the “onus” and “burden” of understanding the legal “nuance” of orders on the “rank and file.”

“Isn’t there something to senators taking on that task themselves and not necessarily, maybe, outsourcing it to rank and file that might not be as versed in what is legal and what isn’t? Isn’t that a hard decision for them?” Stewart asked.

Kelly replied: “Well, let me explain this as plainly as I can. This is a question about what would a reasonable person think under these circumstances.”

“Is that the standard?” Stewart cut in.

“That’s the standard,” Kelly confirmed. “It’s not nuanced. It’s not complicated. If a reasonable person would think that this thing that they are asking me to do is illegal, you have an obligation – it’s not an option – you have an obligation not to follow those orders.”

Stewart then ran a specific case: “So are the boat strikes illegal?”

“Well, so I’ve been asking this question for a long time on the Armed Services and the Intelligence Committee. They have some complicated legal rationale, 40 pages, of why these [strikes] are legal. It’s questionable at best,” he began. “And by the way at first it was fentanyl, then it was cocaine, then it was about regime change, then it was about oil.”

“I understand,” the host said: “But do you see my point? You yourself are saying ‘I don’t know.’”

Kelly pressed on: “Our point to members of the military, who don’t get reminded of this often, when something is clearly unlawful, you have an obligation not to follow those orders. It’s a pretty simple thing. And we’ve seen in our history, multiple times, when even under those circumstances, members of the military have done stuff that was clearly over the line. We did not want that to happen.”

“Under the Obama administration they did extrajudicial killings of an American citizen through drone strikes, like we criticize that,” Stewart followed up.

He added: “My point is there’s enough gray area in some of these actions.”

Watch above via Comedy Central.