Tell Me You Know Nothing About The Rule Of Law…

 …without telling me… you know the rest:

If you look at sedition, if you look at, you know, that type of, that's a form of, a very strong form of being a traitor, it's a terrible thing to say," the president said. "What they said is, and it was, I mean, I don't know about the modern day things because, you know, modern day is a lot softer, but In the old days, if you said a thing like that, that was punishable by death."

"I'm not threatening them, but I think they're in serious trouble," Trump claimed. "I'm not threatening death, but I think they're in serious trouble. In the old days, it was death."

The president insisted that Democrats who made the video were "bad people."

"Now, what happens to them, I can't tell you. But they broke the law. That is a terrible statement," he remarked. "That was a traitorous statement. That was a horrible thing to do. I believe they broke the law very strongly. I think it's a very serious violation of the law."

"I think Pete Hegseth is looking into it," he added. "I know they're looking into it militarily. I don't know for a fact, but I think the military is looking into it, the military courts."

A) threats are precisely what he issued. By his own words, he’s the nation’s “chief law enforcement officer” (no, he isn’t, but stick with me).  He’s not the drunk at the end of the bar shouting: “HANGIN’S TOO GOOD FER ‘EM!” His words carry weight, whether he wants them to, or not. (Tl:dr: watch him scurry once again away from responsibility.)

B) He wouldn’t know a violation of criminal law if it bit him in the ass. (As it has done, at least 34 times.)

C) Nothing “happens to them,” because, basically, the First Amendment. Proving sedition is so hard, there was skepticism the DOJ could do it. It turned out J6 was so extraordinary, proving the sedition cases was entirely possible. But it still took extraordinary events.

Telling members of the military what they are already told as members of the military (illegal orders are not enforceable; the same thing company employees know) is not, in any conceivable sense, sedition.

D) Civilians are not subject to the UCMJ. Not even when they are expressing opinions in public about the military. So Hegseth and the DOD have no authority to investigate anything those Congresspeople said in their ad. And military courts are not courts of general jurisdiction. They have no authority over members of Congress speaking about, or to, military personnel in general, in public, or even in private.

Worse than that, he doesn’t know what Hegseth is making DOD do about it, but he thinks he does? And he thinks they should? Will he disavow responsibility for that conjecture when it comes back to bite him in the ass?

Yeah, right.

E) (I had to get around to it.) Sedition is not punishable by death. Perhaps it was “in the old days.” Trump’s reference to Washington is to the case of Thomas Hickey, who was found guilty of mutiny and sedition against the Continental Army, in 1776, and summarily hanged. I don’t think hanging is an allowed form of execution now, even under the Roberts Court. This was before the Articles of Confederation or the Constitution or the laws of Congress under that Constitution. A case with no bearing on the UCMJ or the current criminal sedition statutes whatsoever. Trump is a mewling old man dribbling out spasms of thought and simultaneously disavowing responsibility for anything he says.