White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News on Monday that the U.S. military “can’t have” soldiers questioning whether an order is lawful in the field.
Last week, six Democratic lawmakers with military and intelligence backgrounds released a video urging military service members to disobey illegal orders from President Donald Trump’s administration. This led to a firestorm of criticism from the GOP and Trump, who called the video “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR” on social media and reposted a message that called for the lawmakers to be executed.
Appearing on “The Story With Martha MacCallum,” Leavitt condemned those lawmakers for “essentially encouraging [military personnel] to defy the orders of their commander-in-chief.
“They are trying to sow chaos and distrust, which is a very dangerous thing to do within the military,” Leavitt continued.
MacCallum said the Democratic lawmakers are now “kind of stepping all over themselves trying to answer the question about what they were talking about in the first place” in the released video.
“They can’t answer the question, Martha, because there is no answer. They can’t identify illegal orders because there are no illegal orders,” Leavitt said. “But they were suggesting, again, to the 1.3 million active duty service members in the military today that if you think an order is illegal, you don’t have to follow it.”
“You can’t have a soldier out on the battlefield or conducting a classified order questioning whether that order is lawful or whether they should follow through,” Leavitt added. “There must be a chain of command in our military.”
On Sunday, Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), one of the lawmakers to release the video, admitted during an interview on ABC’s ”This Week″ that she was “not aware” of whether Trump has issued any illegal orders to the military.
In addition to Slotkin, the Nov. 18 video also included Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-Pa.), Rep. Maggie Goodlander (D-N.H.), Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa.), and Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.).
The Department of Defense announced Monday on X that it is opening an investigation into Kelly, a retired Navy captain, in connection with the video.
Following the video’s release, the FBI said it’s working to schedule interviews with the lawmakers in the video.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth called the video “despicable, reckless, and false” in an X post Monday.
“In the military, vague rhetoric and ambiguity undermines trust, creates hesitation in the chain of command, and erodes cohesion,” Hegseth added. “The military already has clear procedures for handling unlawful orders. It does not need political actors injecting doubt into an already clear chain of command.”
Watch Leavitt’s appearance on Fox News below.