Democratic Senator Elissa Slotkin found herself in a rhetorical bind this weekend after appearing in a viral video alongside five other Democratic veterans urging members of the U.S. military to reject “illegal orders” from President Donald Trump. But when pressed by This Week host Martha Raddatz on Sunday to name a single illegal order Trump has actually issued, Slotkin had no answer.
“To my knowledge, I am not aware of things that are illegal,” Slotkin conceded, immediately undermining the entire premise of the video she had helped craft. The segment, originally intended as a stark warning about the supposed dangers of Trump’s military leadership, instead revealed a lack of concrete evidence—raising questions about whether the video was a sincere appeal to military ethics or a politically motivated hit piece.
Slotkin attempted to defend the campaign by citing “legal gymnastics” surrounding ongoing U.S. military strikes in the Caribbean and near Venezuelan waters. But even that line of criticism fell flat, as she stopped short of calling the strikes illegal. The operations in question—authorized under Trump’s recent designation of Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua cartel as a foreign terrorist organization—include interdictions and destruction of drug-laden vessels in international waters.
Though controversial in some circles, they have passed legal scrutiny thus far. Just last week, the Senate narrowly defeated a War Powers resolution seeking to curtail the strikes, by a vote of 51–49.
Slotkin also claimed that numerous young officers and Judge Advocate General (JAG) attorneys had expressed concerns to her about unclear orders. “I’m in SOUTHCOM,” she quoted one, “I’m involved in the National Guard, I’m just not sure, what do I do?” But such anecdotes, however emotionally persuasive, are not evidence of wrongdoing—let alone illegality.
The optics are especially troubling for Slotkin. A former CIA analyst and current Senate Democrat, she helped produce a video that many—including President Trump and former advisor Stephen Miller—have described as seditious. Trump didn’t mince words, calling the video “sedition at the highest level” and warning that telling service members to disobey orders is a “major crime.” Whether the rhetoric was hyperbolic or not, Slotkin’s failure to cite even a single instance of an unlawful order makes the accusation look like little more than an empty political gesture.
Legal scholars note that the Uniform Code of Military Justice does indeed require soldiers to disobey unlawful orders—a principle rooted in post-World War II Nuremberg doctrine. But that safeguard is intended for unmistakably illegal commands, not preemptive political speculation.
There is a serious conversation to be had about the limits of executive power and the obligations of military personnel under the law. But when that conversation is reduced to vague warnings without evidence—and when its advocates admit under questioning that they can’t point to any specific violations—it risks becoming noise. Worse, it erodes public trust in both military leadership and civil authority by suggesting that chaos is imminent when no legal precedent supports such a claim.
In trying to sound the alarm, Senator Slotkin may have instead highlighted the hollowness of her message. And with tensions already high between the Trump administration and its critics in Washington, one has to wonder whether this political grenade was worth throwing—especially when it never had a pin to begin with.
