Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) became a household name after he and a small group of Democrats made a video telling service members that it was okay to disobey orders.
Kelly is now spouting off about the ICE-involved shooting in Minnesota, although he stopped short of calling it murder or an unjustified act, unlike many of his counterparts.
He was also asked about the Trump administration's operation to remove Venezuela’s President Maduro, and he once again stopped short of declaring it unlawful.
Kelly is a Navy veteran and former astronaut, and I give him mad props for his service and bravery, but that was then, and this is now.
Now he is just another talking head trying to use the military as a pawn to score political points.
Even after he made his video, he would not identify any orders that were given that he believed should have disobeyed, and he eventually found himself the target of attacks from the administration.
Kelly responded to those criticisms, stating, “I am not going to be silenced.”
Kelly was one of many Democrats who expressed outrage over a woman being shot by ICE agents in Minneapolis after she allegedly tried to run one of them down.
The lawmaker stated, “I am really concerned about what Kristi Noem and DHS has done in these communities by sending dozens, hundreds of people in there, going after people in their community who are no threat to society.”
He later added, “This is not what he ran on. He said he was going to be removing gang members and criminals and from our communities. ICE is going after just like regular people: moms, folks who are — obviously they’re undocumented — but they’re no threat to society.”
Actually, Donald Trump was pretty clear before the 2024 election that he was going to deport everyone in the country who came here illegally, so Kelly is bending the truth just a bit there.
So, I brought up the points above so that you would notice that while Kelly is complaining about everything, he has yet to state plainly what, if anything, Trump has done that is actually illegal. And even though he, like other Democrats, has complained about the Maduro arrest, he has not weighed in on its legality.
When asked for context on the arrest, he responded, “Now, Maduro is a bad guy, and it‘s good that he‘s gone. It seems like this president, because he had no plan beyond removing Maduro, has now installed Maduro‘s No. 2 person in Delcy Rodriguez.”
He continued, “You know, that‘s what we call, in the Navy, fleeting up when the executive officer becomes the commanding officer. That‘s the situation we have in Venezuela right now. And it‘s because I don‘t think they had a plan of what was going to come next.”
Again, Kelly is not exactly telling the truth. It was not Trump who installed Rodriguez, but rather the Venezuelan Supreme Court. That is a rather important detail that CNN’s Jake Tapper should have called out during his conversation with the senator, but he did not. Democrats have yet to provide actual proof that anything the administration has done is illegal, only leveling whiny arguments instead, but that, unfortunately for them, will not hold up in a court of law.
