Senator Mark Kelly – whose wife, Gabrielle Giffords, narrowly survived an attempted assassination while she was in Congress in 2011 – says he is worried about “increased threats” to his family’s safety after Donald Trump accused him and other Democratic lawmakers of “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH”.
“This kind of language is dangerous, and it’s wrong,” Kelly said on Friday on MS NOW’s Morning Joe, with political violence one of the top topics in the US’s public discourse. He continued: “I’m not going to get into my specific security arrangements, but it would be irresponsible for me not to consider that [Trump’s] words result in increased threats to myself, even to my staff, to my family.
“It would be a rather irresponsible thing for us not to consider this seriously.”
The Arizona senator’s remarks came after he appeared in a video on Tuesday alongside five other federal Democratic lawmakers who have previously served in the military or in intelligence roles – and who all told active US service members that they should refuse illegal orders.
“Our laws are clear,” the senators and US House members in question say in the video. “You can refuse illegal orders. You must refuse illegal orders. No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our constitution.”