Trump is a ‘con man president’

U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly said Friday he wasn’t going to be “bullied” by President Donald Trump.

“If he thinks I’m going to back down, he’s lost his mind,” Kelly told the audience of roughly 400 people at a town hall in Tucson.

The Arizona Democrat said he began speaking out because he was disturbed by the way Trump and Hegseth have been using military force.

“I’ve been really concerned because what I’ve seen from the Secretary of Defense and the president is not normal,” he said. “Let me make this perfectly clear: It is not normal to have a president of the United States say, ‘We’re just going to kill them,’ or a secretary of Defense (saying) “We’re going to hunt and kill people.’ Hunt and kill people. That’s not about our national defense. That’s about something else. And I became really concerned. So you probably saw that I’ve been busy.”

Kelly, who flew bombing missions in the first Gulf War as a Navy pilot before becoming a NASA astronaut and space shuttle commander, recounted how he had made a video with five other Senate Democrats – all military veterans or former intelligence agents – who reminded service members they had an obligation to refuse to follow unlawful orders.

The video was posted on social media in mid-November.

After the video’s release, Trump accused the lawmakers via social media of “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!”

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth later said he might recall Kelly to active duty so he could face a court martial.

“(Trump) said I should be executed,” Kelly said. “I should be prosecuted. He sics the full force of the DoD, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, on me for saying something that’s in the Uniform Code of Military Justice. You actually cannot make this stuff up. This is how ridiculous these people are, how unprofessional, how unqualified. But it is serious. I mean, he’s the president and he said I should die because of what I said.”

In September, the Trump administration began sinking boats in international waters off the coast of Venezuela, saying they were piloted by drug smugglers headed to the United States. A CNN timeline shows that as of Dec. 4, the U.S. military had conducted 23 strikes and killed 87 people.

The Washington Post reported over Thanksgiving weekend that Hegseth had given a verbal order to “kill everybody” aboard the boat during the first strike on Sept. 2, the U.S. military had made a second strike on survivors who were clinging to the hull of the capsized boat. Hegseth has denied giving that directive.

Senators on both sides of the political aisle expressed concern about whether the second strike was lawful, with Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina saying last week that accounts of a second strike on shipwrecked people appeared to be “a violation of ethical, moral and legal code.”

The Department of Defense Law of War Manual specifically prohibits attacking people who are shipwrecked because they are defenseless.

“Shipwrecked combatants include those who have been shipwrecked from any cause…,” the manual notes. “Persons who have been incapacitated by … shipwreck are in a helpless state, and it would be dishonorable and inhumane to make them the object of attack. In order to receive protection as hors de combat, the person must be wholly disabled from fighting.”

The manual also notes that “orders to fire upon the shipwrecked would be clearly illegal.”

Trump and Hegseth have defended the strikes, although on Dec. 2, Hegseth said he left the room after the first strike and was not present for the second strike, which he said was ordered by Adm. Frank M. “Mitch” Bradley.

Hegseth said Bradley “made the correct decision to ultimately sink the boat and eliminate the threat.”

Kelly told the crowd at the town hall that Trump’s threats of prosecution were an effort to not only intimidate him but anyone who might speak out against him.

“It says to everybody, every other American, whether you’re a retired service member like me, or you’re a veteran, or you’re an active duty service member, or you’re anybody across our great nation, the message it sends is, ‘Don’t say something the president doesn’t like, or he is going to come after you,’” Kelly said. So that’s why I’m speaking out. This is not about me. It’s about the right of free speech for every single American.”

Kelly told the crowd he’s had to take some “some extra precautions” as a result of rising death threats and his wife, former U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords, since Trump had targeted him.

“But I am doing fine,” he said. “Gabby’s fine.”

He said he read one of Hegseth’s tweets to Giffords and “by the second sentence, she starts laughing. She realizes two things. One, that guy’s a joke, and number two, I’m not backing down.”

In an interview after the town hall, Kelly said he’s received one message regarding an investigation.

“We got something from the FBI,” Kelly said. “We got one thing. Didn’t even have a point of contact on it. That’s how unprofessional this DOJ has become. Now I have confidence in the independence of our system and I’m going to comply with the law.”

‘Con man president’

Onstage at the town hall, Kelly said Trump was “working against the American people.”

“Jobs are down, wages are flat, costs are up, and this president is asleep on the job every day and it’s hurting the American people,” Kelly said. “He’s doing nothing to try to help people with the cost of groceries and rent and health care.”

Kelly said Trump “has turned the United States government into a crappy reality TV show with bad ratings and it’s time to turn it off.”

Asked about how the Trump administration could be held accountable, Kelly said Trump had broken the usual guardrails that protect against corruption in government, such as the Justice Department.

“He’s got it full of a bunch of sycophants, yes people, people that are just going to kiss his butt and do exactly what he says,” Kelly said. “Is the Department of Justice going to hold this president accountable for ripping off the American people? He wants $230 million out of the treasury of your money into his pocket.”

“And at the same time he’s creating these meme coins and then doing the rug pull,” Kelly added. “And those are his supporters that are buying those. Those aren’t our folks in this room. It’s not me. He even rips off his own people. He takes their money and he stuffs it right into his pocket, and he does it with sneakers and Bibles and bad meat and wine and now guns.”

“He is the con man president.”

Stumping for Mendoza

Kelly was interviewed onstage by Joanna Mendoza, a Democrat who is seeking to unseat U.S. Rep. Juan Ciscomani, the Republican who represents Southern Arizona’s Congressional District 6, in next year’s midterm election.

A Marine and Navy veteran with two decades of service that included tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, Mendoza talked about growing up in poverty in the Eloy area, where she sometimes joined her parents picking cotton in the summer.

“​​My parents worked so hard,” Mendoza said. “They worked so hard doing back-breaking work in the hot Arizona sun, and they got paid crap for wages and they had no health insurance,” Mendoza said.

Mendoza, who previously ran unsuccessfully for the Arizona Legislature in 2020, said she launched her congressional bid because “like you, I am sick and tired of the betrayal and the lies and the lawlessness and the chaos. Can we just make politics boring again?”

Kelly said Ciscomani was missing in action during the government shutdown.

“During that government shutdown, I was in Washington trying to get the government opened back up and fix this problem with spiking premiums for people’s healthcare,” Kelly said. “You know where Juan Ciscomani was? No, nobody knows. He was on vacation somewhere for like six weeks, just disappeared. He wasn’t in his office. Maybe he was in his mom’s basement. I don’t know. He’s not doing this job.”

Kelly said that Ciscomani often threatens to buck leadership but he ends up voting in lockstep with Trump and GOP leadership.

“At every turn, he tries to say how he’s going to write a letter about them kicking people off of Medicaid, or ‘I’m going to talk to somebody about these spiking health care premiums,’ and every single time, he votes with his leadership, he votes with Donald Trump, and he votes against Arizonans in his district.”

Kelly told the crowd that Republicans were blocking efforts to extend tax credits and subsidies for people buying insurance on the Affordable Care Act’s online marketplace, although he was anticipating a Senate vote to renew the credits for three more years.

Kelly said he didn’t have “high expectations for my Republican colleagues to vote for this.”

The expiration of the credits at the end of the year, combined with rising healthcare insurance costs across the board, have resulted in spiking insurance premiums on the online exchanges.

“We should be able, as the richest country in the world, to help people who can’t afford insurance get something,” Kelly said. “When Republicans are in charge of Congress and the White House, they pass policies that help rich people get richer.”

In a brief interview after the town hall, Kelly acknowledged that health insurance rates were on the rise across the board.

“We have to address that,” Kelly said. “We absolutely have to do more. We pay more for health insurance per capita than any other country, and we get worse results. So we’ve got to take a serious look at it.”

He offered no specific details.

He was also wary of the most recent peace proposal in the Ukraine war, which he described as “the one written by the Russians, the one transmitted by Steve Witkoff.”

“It doesn’t make us safer,” Kelly said. “Maybe not tomorrow, but it will make the United States of America and our allies much less safe. It’s not a deal that the Ukrainians should accept, and I don’t think they’re going to accept it, because this is everything that Putin wanted.”

Kelly also warned the crowd that the Trump administration, congressional Republicans and Arizona lawmakers were trying to make it more difficult to vote because “when fewer people vote, they tend to win.”

“They’ll try to pass legislation to make it harder,” Kelly said. “They want to get rid of vote by mail.… People like to vote by mail. It’s convenient, but what happens when you vote by mail is, more people vote. They don’t like that.”