White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt and CBS News White House correspondent Nancy Cordes face off over President Donald Trump’s reaction to Democrats in the House and Senate calling for servicemembers to refuse “illegal orders” from the president. “Why aren’t you concerned about what these members of Congress are doing to encourage and incite violence? They are literally saying to 1.3 million active-duty service members not to defy the chain of command, not to follow lawful orders,” Leavitt said to Cordes.

NANCY CORDES, CBS NEWS: 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? KAROLINE LEAVITT, WHITE HOUSE: No, 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. 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. We have 1.3 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 Alyssa 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 national security former advisor, Jake Sullivan. These members knew what they were doing. They were leading 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 the Department of War to decide. CORDES: But the president has frequently- LEAVITT: Chris — CORDES: Karoline, can I just follow up? The president and the vice president, for that matter, have accused the other side of encouraging political violence. Isn’t that exactly what the president is doing when he says that members of Congress should be killed? LEAVITT: Why aren’t you concerned about what these members of Congress are doing to encourage and incite violence? They are literally saying to 1.3 million active-duty service members not to defy the chain of command, not to follow lawful orders. Every single- CORDES: Actually, they said that you can refuse an illegal order, which is- LEAVITT: They’re suggesting, Nancy, that the president has given illegal orders, which he has not. Every single order that is given to this United States military by this commander-in-chief and through this chain of command, through the secretary of war, is lawful. And the courts have proven that. This administration has an unparalleled record at the Supreme Court, because we are following the laws. We don’t defy court orders. We do things by the books. And to suggest and encourage that active-duty service members defy the chain of command is a very dangerous thing for sitting members of Congress to do. And they should be held accountable. And that’s what the president wants to see.

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