The MAGA media response to six Democratic members of Congress reminding their former compatriots in the military and intelligence community of their duty to “refuse illegal orders” reached a fever pitch on Thursday. After President Donald Trump suggested earlier that day that the lawmakers should face the death penalty for sedition, his propagandists chimed in, describing the Democrats as “devious and subversive” and their actions as “border[ing] on treason.”

On Wednesday, Sens. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) and Mark Kelly (D-AZ), as well as Reps. Jason Crow (D-CO), Maggie Goodlander (D-NH), Chris Deluzio (D-PA), and Chrissy Houlahan (D-PA) released a video in which they urged current members of the military and intelligence community to disobey “illegal orders.” While they did not provide examples, the release came amid debates over the legality of U.S. military strikes in the Caribbean and domestic troop deployments. The video drew a deranged response from many on the right, who accused the lawmakers of committing “treason” and trying to “trigger a military coup.” 

The president himself weighed in Thursday morning with a series of Truth Social posts in which he accused the lawmakers of “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR,” described them as “traitors to our Country,” and called for them to be “ARRESTED AND PUT ON TRIAL” for crimes he described as “punishable by DEATH!” The lawmakers in the video and Democratic House leadership both condemned Trump’s posts, while White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed that Trump did not in fact seek the deaths of the members of Congress. 

Trump is currently operating from a position of weakness, with his support in polls in a tailspin and his congressional allies having successfully revolted over the Jeffrey Epstein files. He’s previously responded to such circumstances by seeking to reunify his coalition by pointing them at a common enemy, and that seems to be what has happened this week. To the extent that he’s given his most loyal propagandists someone to attack, it’s working.

Fox News prime-time host Jesse Watters claimed on Thursday night that the “Democrats sent a clear message to everybody in the military and CIA: You're free to commit treason.” He described their actions as “devious and subversive,” said they were “planting coup seeds inside the Pentagon and at Langley,” and accused them of “psychological warfare launched by sitting politicians against the American military in peacetime” and “trying to blow up the chain of command.”

Watters’ colleague Sean Hannity argued the next hour, “The only question tonight [is] will these six Democratic lawmakers be held accountable in a court of law?” He then commented that he’s “not sure” they committed crimes punishable by death because he’s “not a lawyer,” and asked Fox contributor and former Republican congressman Jason Chaffetz to weigh in. Chaffetz assured him that “what they did borders on treason. It really does.” He added that “President Trump was actually exactly right” because “If you do commit treason, guess what? It is punishable by death. That's just the law. He's just reciting the law.”

Their competitors at Newsmax were similarly enraged. Carl Higbie declared that Trump’s posts show he “is done playing around with garbage,” pointed out that “George Washington did hang traitors many times, including Benedict Arnold's British counterpart,” and claimed that the Democrats “should be court-martialed themselves” because “that type of rhetoric from senators and congressmen is sedition.” Greg Kelly commented that “a lot of people” think the lawmakers committed “treason, or mutiny, or something along those lines,” and accused them of “plotting the seeds, I think, of another coup.” And The Right Squad’s Chris Plante said the Democrats were “inciting civil war.”

And Laura Loomer, whose influence in the Oval Office has triggered the firings of numerous administration officials for insufficient loyalty, wrote: “President Trump just re posted a post on Truth Social calling for seditious Democrat Senators to be hung for calling on members of the military to defy President Trump’s orders as Commander in Chief.”

“Trump is right,” she added. “That’s the type of justice Americans want to see.”