After President Donald Trump accused a group of Democratic lawmakers of “seditious behavior” on social media and suggested they be either jailed or hanged, a familiar dynamic returned to Capitol Hill on Thursday: selective listening.
Trump’s post — in which he called some Democratic lawmakers “traitors,” said they should be “ARRESTED AND PUT ON TRIAL” and shared another Truth Social user’s call to “HANG THEM,” all because these Democrats said the military shouldn’t follow unlawful orders — set off a round of responses that almost entirely depended on a lawmaker’s party.
For Democrats, it was a serious threat, and just the latest example of Trump promoting political violence against his foes. For Republicans, it was just Trump being Trump. A select few lightly criticized the president. Others steered clear, claiming they hadn’t seen the Truth Social posts. And some Republicans only took issue with the group of Democrats who posted a video telling members of the military they can “refuse illegal orders.”
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., sided with the president, telling reporters, “What I read was he was defining the crime of sedition.”
“That is a factual statement,” Johnson continued.
Instead of chastising Trump, the speaker denounced the Democrats, calling their message “wildly inappropriate.”
“Think of the threat that is to our national security and what it means to our institutions,” Johnson said. “I just — we have got to raise the bar in Congress. This is out of control.”
Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., told reporters that Trump’s message to jail and hang Democrats was “hypothetical.”
“Trump’s not going to ask somebody to do something that’s illegal,” Scott said.
And Sen. Jim Justice, R-W. Va., told reporters that he was “not going to get into volleying back and forth with the president at all.”
“I really support what our president’s doing, and I think he’s done a marvelous job,” Justice said.
Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., also jumped to the president’s defense.
“If this were any other time in history, those folks would be in chains and they’d be in prison,” Burchett said of the Democrats.
And pressed on whether he was really comfortable with the president suggesting these Democrats should be hanged, Burchett asked a question in response: “Is that what the crime calls for? Is that what the law says the crime calls for?”
Other GOP lawmakers hid behind the defense that they were unfamiliar with Trump’s latest social media posts. (The president posted and reposted on Truth Social more than a dozen times Thursday, personally calling the Democrats’ video “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL,” “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR FROM TRAITORS” and “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” He also reposted one Truth post saying, “HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD.”)
Despite the posts being the talk of Capitol Hill on Thursday, plenty of Republicans said they missed Trump’s comments.
“I didn’t see it,” said Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala.
“I don’t know anything about it,” House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., said. “I’m not gonna comment on a tweet that I haven’t read. I don’t know anything about it.”
“I have been at Vice President Cheney’s service all morning so I have not looked at my phone,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska.
And when MS NOW asked Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., about the president’s comments, Wicker said, “I haven’t been commenting.”
Of course, not every Republican was ignoring the comments or completely jumping to the president’s defense.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said the Democratic video was “ill-advised” and “provocative.” But, he told reporters, he does not agree with Trump calling for the death penalty.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a close ally of Trump, said that while the conduct of the Democrats was “despicable” — which he noted three times — he also said the president’s comments were “over the top.”
“I don’t agree with the president they should be put in jail,” Graham said.
Pressed specifically by MS NOW about Trump calling for these lawmakers to be hanged, Graham said: “That’s not the right answer.”
A pair of moderate House Republicans also pushed back. Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., who’s retiring at the end of next year, told MS NOW that while the Democrats’ video “was not wise,” the president’s post — “threatening capital punishment on those who made it” — was “even more unwise.”
And Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., one of three GOP lawmakers representing a district Vice President Kamala Harris won in 2024, wrote on X that “two things are true.”
The President should not imply that Members of Congress should face death, no matter how ill-advised their comments are.”
Rep. mike lawler, r-n.y.
“Members of Congress should not be calling for active duty troops to defy orders issued by the Commander-in-Chief by trying to imply they have been given illegal orders and not being able to cite one,” Lawler said, while also saying “The President should not imply that Members of Congress should face death, no matter how ill-advised their comments are.”
“The rhetoric needs to be brought down stat,” he concluded.
Democrats, for their part, were deeply concerned that a message that is factually true — members of the military actually have a “duty to disobey” an order that is unlawful — would be met with calls for political violence by the president.
“What’s most telling is that the President considers it punishable by death for us to restate the law,” the Democratic lawmakers in the video wrote in a joint statement. (Sens. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., and Reps. Jason Crow, D-Colo., Chris Deluzio, D-Pa., Maggie Goodlander, D-N.H. and Chrissy Houlahan, D-Pa., were featured in the video and signed the statement.)
“This isn’t about politics. This is about who we are as Americans,” the group added. “Every American must unite and condemn the President’s calls for our murder and political violence.”
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., a top critic of the president, said Thursday’s social media saga was, in his opinion, the worst onslaught of the past 10 months of the Trump administration.
“This isn’t like a normal political story,” Murphy told reporters. “This is perhaps the most reckless, irresponsible thing that he has done all Congress — and it’s gonna get a lot of us killed.”
Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill were similarly outraged.
In a statement, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., and other top House Democrats said Trump’s “violent and unhinged rhetoric against American patriots is consistent with his well-documented history of attacking prisoners of war, Gold Star families and war heroes.”
“There is no bottom when it comes to Donald Trump,” they said, adding that they were in touch with the House Sergeant at Arms and the U.S. Capitol Police “to ensure the safety of these Members and their families.”
And Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. — who argued the Democrats had “an absolute right to say” what they did in the video — told reporters he has “never seen” a president “who has done more to encourage political violence.”
“He is not saying this in a vacuum,” Schumer said. “He is throwing a match into a country filled with political extreme gasoline.”
“It is dangerous,” he added. “It is devastating.”
Kevin Frey is a congressional reporter for MS NOW.
Mychael Schnell is a reporter for MS NOW.