Listen To This Story

In his Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln proclaimed his belief that a government “of the people, by the people, for the people” would survive the Civil War and beyond. He was right for eight score and two years. Now, however, this government, as well as his Republican Party, primarily cater to the whims of one man, and both consist of a bunch of sycophants ready to jump into action on his behalf.

While Donald Trump wouldn’t have it any other way, it’s not exactly the most efficient way to govern.

And, even though his administration is doing plenty of damage to democracy, the rule of law, and the economy, things could be much worse if the president and his underlings wouldn’t get caught up in sideshows all the time.

We are seeing a great example of this dynamic playing out right now.

It comes courtesy of six Democratic lawmakers who made a video in which they correctly stated that members of the US military don’t have to follow illegal orders.

This shouldn’t have been overly controversial.

Essentially, the two senators and four representatives, all of whom either served in the armed forces or the intelligence community, simply affirmed a principle that is anchored in the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ)

Sure, the implication is that Trump may order service members to do something illegal, but in light of the president’s past rhetoric, his stated desire of putting troops on the ground in US cities, and his ordering the extrajudicial killings of suspected drug smugglers in international waters, that’s hardly a stretch.

Still, this should barely have been a story, and certainly not something that merited a government response apart, maybe, from a Pentagon or White House spokesperson huffily dismissing the notion that this law-abiding commander-in-chief would ever do the kind of thing he has said he would do.

And that would have been the end of it.

That’s not what happened, of course, because Trump saw the video on TV somewhere and didn’t like it.

He then went on social media to claim that this was “seditious behavior, punishable by death,” and thereby elevated the matter to what the Nazis referred to as a Führersache, i.e., an issue that was of interest to or had to be addressed by Adolf Hitler or his inner circle.

In this case, this means that, in an effort to stay on Trump’s good side, top government officials and other toadies got involved and spent precious resources on creating an outcome that would please the president.

That begins with Fox News, which covered the “Seditious Six,” as the network labeled the Democrats, ad nauseam in order to prove its loyalty to Trump, who periodically threatens the network with a withdrawal of his patronage (usually when Fox actually reports the news).

From there, things quickly went from dumb to absurd.

In the days following Trump’s initial social media posts, the FBI has opened an investigation into the lawmakers and, at the request of former Fox News morning show host and current Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, the Pentagon is probing whether Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) could be court martialed for stating a principle enshrined in the UCMJ.

In fact, members of the military don’t just have the option of disobeying an illegal order; they have an obligation to do so.

It stands to reason that both the FBI and the Pentagon have something better to do than to launch contrived investigations into members of Congress for exercising their right to free speech.

There also must be people in the administration who understand that the optics of this make them look vindictive and crazy, but insane is the name of the game these days, so everybody plays their part to make Trump happy.

But to what end? There is no “positive” outcome for the White House here.

Trump wants these lawmakers to be locked up (and amplified a call for them to be hanged), which obviously isn’t going to happen.

Short of that, how could this, i.e., six elected officials stating a fact, possibly be resolved in a way that makes the president happy?

In reality, the best case for Republicans here is for this to just go away and for Trump to move on to the next thing he obsesses about. But that poses its own challenge because talking about it on Fox will make him happy.

In other words, this is just an extremely silly, self-sustaining, and time-consuming feedback loop that serves as a great example of how Trump, and his courtiers, are getting in their own way all the time by creating ridiculous sideshows.

Mind you, we are not terribly upset about how this is playing out because the “better” things that the Bureau or the Pentagon, especially Hegseth and FBI Director Kash Patel, would otherwise be doing are likely a lot worse for the country and democracy.