Karoline Leavitt Asked Point Blank: ‘Does the President Want to Execute Members of Congress?’

Nancy Cordes, CBS News’ chief White House correspondent, asked Trump Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt point-blank on Thursday if President Donald Trump wants to execute members of Congress, following Trump’s social media posts suggesting he does.

“Thanks, Karoline. This morning, President Trump accused six Democratic lawmakers of seditious behavior punishable by death. Just to be clear, does the President want to execute members of Congress?”

“Let’s be clear about what the president is responding to, because many in this room want to talk about the President’s response, but not what brought the president to responding in this way. You have sitting members of the United States Congress who conspired together to orchestrate a video message to members of the United States military, to active duty service members, to members of the national security apparatus, encouraging them to defy the President’s lawful orders,” replied Leavitt.

Notably, the clip in question was of Democrats, all veterans, urging military members not to follow “illegal orders.”

“The sanctity of our military rests on the chain of command, and if that chain of command is broken, it can lead to people getting killed. It can lead to chaos, and that’s what these members of Congress, who swore an oath to abide by the Constitution, are essentially encouraging,” Leavitt continued, adding:

We have 1.3 [million] active duty service members in this country, and if they hear this radical message from sitting members of Congress, that could inspire chaos and it could incite violence, and it certainly could disrupt the chain of command. These three members of Congress—I will also add—knew exactly what they were doing.

You look at Elissa Slotkin: she’s a former member of the CIA. Mark Kelly was a captain in the U.S. Navy. Maggie Goodlander was a naval officer, and notably, she is also the wife of Joe Biden’s former national security advisor, Jake Sullivan. And so these members knew what they were doing. They were leaning into their credentials as former members of our military, as veterans, as former members of the national security apparatus, to signal to people serving under this Commander in Chief, Donald Trump, that you can defy him and you can betray your oath of office. That is a very, very dangerous message, and it perhaps is punishable by law. I’m not a lawyer. I’ll leave that to the Department of Justice and Department of Defense to decide.

Watch the clip above via Fox News.

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