Did you know that Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) served 25 years in the U.S. Navy?
If you’ve been paying attention to the controversy surrounding the “illegal orders” video the senator starred in, it would be hard not to. It’s something he touts at seemingly every possible moment, in every possible interview, in every possible media clip while speaking about something that has nothing to do with his 25 years of military service. It has progressed to the point where I think I know more about Kelly’s military service than I do about what was possibly illegal in the orders he urged military personnel to disobey.
Consider just two of Kelly’s responses this week about the lingering controversy.
First, in a post on X on Dec. 15, Kelly discussed the controversy and his feud with Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. With his usual theatrics and performative hysteria, Kelly rebuked Hegseth and the Trump administration while also mentioning — you guessed it — his 25 years of military service.
“It should send a shiver down the spine of every patriotic American that the president and secretary of defense would abuse their power to come after me or anyone this way,” Kelly said in his post.
“It wasn’t enough for Donald Trump to say I should be hanged,” the senator added. “It wasn’t enough for Pete Hegseth to threaten me with a court-martial. Now they are threatening everything I fought and served for across twenty-five years in the U.S. Navy– all because I repeated something every service member is taught.”
So, after two paragraphs in half of his post on X, Kelly referenced his “25 years in the U.S. Navy.” It would not be the last as Kelly, once again, brought up his military service in the second half of his X post. As if serving in the U.S. Navy somehow completely absolves you from possible wrongdoing later in life, such as being a U.S. senator, and implying that service members should effectively commit a mutiny over orders that don’t align with Democratic values and ideology.
“If Trump and Hegseth think this will stop me from doing what I’ve done every day of my adult life – fighting for this country – then they’ve got the wrong guy,” Kelly said in the final paragraph of his X dissertation.
But wait, there’s more — unfortunately, much more.
During an interview on CNN earlier this week, Kelly, once again, was talking about the controversial “illegal orders” video and a possible subsequent punishment from the “command investigation” and recommended escalation by the Navy Department for the possible infraction, such as a court-martial. In doing so, Kelly once again referenced his seemingly favorite thing to discuss in the world — the 25 years he served in the Navy.
“They call it a command investigation,” Kelly said. “I spent 25 years in the United States Navy. I was in many commands. I retired from the Navy, you know, 14 years ago. I’m not in any command now. I don’t know what they’re talking about.”
These are just the latest examples of which there are (entirely) too many. Going back to Kelly’s appearance last month on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, the senator went right into talking about his military service.
“Well, it’s kind of shocking that the president, you know, we said something, which is basically ‘follow the law,’ and the president of the United States says ‘kill them,’” Kelly told Kimmel at the time. “Hang them, execute them, try them for sedition. I served 25 years in the United States Navy, you know.”
He took his performance one step further in this interview by not only mentioning his 25 years in the Navy but specifying some of the dangers he faced.
“I’ve almost gotten killed for this country, multiple times, almost shot down over Iraq and Kuwait, had a missile blow up next to my airplane,” Kelly said. “I got on a rocket ship four times, millions of pounds of rocket fuel, for this nation.”
There are numerous other examples of Kelly amplifying his military career, far too many to write about in one column. And let’s not make any mistake, Kelly deserves recognition for his military career and exploits (and if you need any convincing of that, ask Kelly himself, he’ll probably tell you once, twice, or five times). But to constantly bring it up while discussing the controversy and logjam he is currently in — that Kelly himself created — is comical at this point.
DOES MARK KELLY EVER STOP LYING ABOUT TRUMP?
He mentions his military service so much that it could be transformed into a kind of game in which people give themself a treat every time Kelly mentions his 25 years of service in the Navy. There could also be some kind of tracker, or bell that rings, or a television graphic that appears on the screen for every interview he gives in which he mentions his service.
This is all theatrical and the latest political performance released by the Democratic political machine. Kelly wraps himself in the flag with repeated mentions of his service to deflect from his possible wrongdoings. As mentioned above, a long and distinguished military career does not exempt one from repercussions.
The ironic thing is that Kelly served 25 years in the U.S. Navy, so you think he would know about accountability.
