Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), speaking at a Center for American Progress event moderated by CEO Neera Tanden, addressed his recent clash with President Donald Trump over warning the military not to follow “illegal orders.” Kelly said backing down would send the wrong message and argued that the issue is fundamentally about First Amendment rights. Read about the event. “He’s also talked about sending US troops into cities and using those cities as training grounds. What that means is American citizens would be used for the military to train on. You combine that with a Secretary of Defense who is by far the most unqualified SECDEF this country has ever seen, who runs around on a stage talking about hunting and killing people and lethality and warrior ethos. We’ve never heard words like that out of a Secretary of Defense before. So we were concerned. And we just said something very simple and basic,” Kelly said about the warning from Democrats.

NEERA TANDEN, HOST: Yeah, I guess I would just ask you first, I guess from my reading of events and just casually reading the news, you and some other former military leaders talked about basic American law in a PSA. And then we, you were attacked relatively viciously. And then we learned- SEN. MARK KELLY (D-AZ) Can it be more vicious? Execute them, hang them. [LAUGHTER] TANDEN: Yeah, it was pretty high. I mean, low bar here, but yes. And then we’ve learned over the last week a lot of really searing details about the possible illegal actions by possibly the Secretary of Defense or others in violating military law. So I guess I’d ask you just to talk through your experience over the last couple of weeks and just the fact that just after this attack on you, we learned facts that confirmed essentially the gist of what you were saying. KELLY: At least makes the justification obvious why we said it, right? We know who Donald Trump is. We’ve known that for a long time. When you consider the things that this president has said in the past, about in 2016, he talked about how he wanted the military to kill the families of terrorists. Families, that means kids, women and children. And he was told on a debate stage, the US military would not do that. That would be illegal. He said, the military will not refuse my orders. He has talked about shooting protesters in the legs. Clearly an example of something that would be — TANDEN: American protesters. American protesters in the legs, clearly an example of something that would be unlawful to give the military that order. Fortunately at the time, Mark Esper was like, we can’t do that. He’s also talked about sending US troops into cities and using those cities as training grounds. What that means is American citizens would be used for the military to train on. You combine that with a secretary of defense who is by far the most unqualified SECDEF this country has ever seen, who runs around on a stage talking about hunting and killing people and lethality and warrior ethos. We’ve never heard words like that out of a Secretary of Defense before. So we were concerned. And we just said something very simple and basic. Follow the law. TANDEN: That’s not so basic for this president. KELLY: And Donald Trump says, kill them. Which we were not expecting. The reaction I was expecting from, even from this president, if he said anything, he would have said two words. Of course. But he didn’t. And now he wants to prosecute me under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, FBI, all that. He’s trying to silence us. He’s trying to silence me. He didn’t like what I said. He wants me to shut up. But he picked the wrong guy to go after because that ain’t happening. [APPLAUSE] But it still sends a chilling message. And certainly if I was to back down, what message does that send? So that’s not happening. He’s going after Americans’ First Amendment rights. This president does not like people to disagree with him. You could see it in the cabinet meeting. I mean, have you ever seen anything like that? It is crazy that he sits around and all these people kiss his ass. Nobody will ever disagree with him. You know, I used to be the commander of the space shuttle. used to tell my crew members when we would start training for a mission, which was like a year and a half or two years before we would fly, I would tell them in a meeting, I’d sit them down and I’d say, okay, guys, you have to question my decisions. This is high stakes, dynamic. We can get killed. We could lose a multi-billion dollar asset. People could get hurt on the ground. If you think I’m doing something wrong here and it affects safety or mission success, you gotta tell me about it and we’ll figure it out together. Not this guy. Thinks he’s the smartest person in the world. He’s not. And he’s put a bunch of sycophants around him, which is a recipe for huge problems.

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