General Discussion

Amid widespread concerns that Trump’s hysterics might put the Democratic veterans in danger, the president returned to the subject a day later during a Fox News Radio interview with Brian Kilmeade. It might’ve seemed like an opportunity for the Republican to walk back his rhetoric, but that apparently wasn’t part of his plan.

Trump on threatening members of Congress: “I'm not threatening death, but I think they're in serious trouble. In the old days, it was death.”

— The Bulwark (@thebulwark.com) 2025-11-21T17:12:16.100Z

.....For good measure, he added, “But in the old days, if you said a thing like that, that was punishable by death. What they said is, I mean, I don’t know about the modern-day things, because, you know, modern day is a lot softer.”

Trump concluded that the military veterans “broke the law,” though he didn’t explain which law was broken. (The president has a habit of defining “illegal” as “stuff I don’t like.”)

Right off the bat, it’s worth emphasizing that any sentence that begins, “I’m not threatening death, but…” is the sort of line a political leader shouldn’t deliver......

On Capitol Hill, Democratic Rep. Jason Crow of Colorado — a decorated military veteran who served in both Iraq and Afghanistan — is seeking a U.S. Capitol Police investigation into Trump for what he described as “intimidating, threatening, and concerning” threats the president made. Democratic Rep. Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania, an Air Force veteran who also appeared in the video in question, told The New Republic’s Greg Sargent that she made a similar appeal to the Capitol Police.

Whether such an investigation will actually happen remains unclear, though if a regular person sent members of Congress a message accusing them of “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” it’s a safe bet law enforcement would follow up and knock on the sender’s door.