Medal of Honor recipient Dakota Meyer says the far-left Democrats who urged military members to disobey “illegal orders” are gambling with the military and inoculating servicemen with doubt about their chain of command.
Meyer knows a thing or two about disobeying orders. He did so to save the lives of fellow Marines and Afghan soldiers in 2009.
But what the Democrats are doing, he explained at his Substack, is different.
The Democrats’ Appeal
As The New American reported this week, six Democrats, led by two senators, former Navy pilot Mark Kelly of Arizona and former CIA analyst Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, told soldiers, sailors, and airmen to disobey orders they deemed to be illegal.
Strangely, they didn’t appeal to Marines. In any event, taking turns speaking in a video, the six said, “You can refuse illegal orders. You can refuse illegal orders. You must refuse illegal orders. No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our Constitution.”
President Trump responded by accusing the Gang of Six of “seditious behavior,” which is “punishable by death.”
U.S. law is clear on sedition and mutiny:
A person who is found guilty of attempted mutiny, mutiny, sedition, or failure to suppress or report a mutiny or sedition shall be punished by death or such other punishment as a court-martial may direct [Emphasis added].
That is what the six were asking servicemen to risk. The six risked nothing.
Still, Democrats repaired to their fainting couches.
Meyer Steps In
Meyer rushed into the breach yesterday on X and his Substack, The BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front).
The video “is a direct threat to the stability of this country,” he wrote, targeting Kelly. Telling servicemen they can refuse legal orders “is being weaponized as a Trojan horse to undermine trust in the Commander in Chief and the chain of command.”
Meyer accused the six of serving “their own political survival.” The war hero also accused the gang of encouraging terrorism:
What Kelly and others are doing checks every box of the federal definition of domestic terrorism: intimidation, coercion, and influencing policy through threats against government authority.
Democrats and Republicans deserve leaders who represent them — not leaders who gamble with the military to score political points.
Meyer said the gang is telling “service members to defy orders from their lawfully elected Commander in Chief.”
Again citing Kelly, who said “our laws are clear — you can refuse illegal orders,” Meyer explained that, “on its face, that sounds harmless.”
“But trust me this isn’t about reminding troops of the law,” he continued:
This isn’t about illegal orders.
No such order has been given.
Everyone knows that.
And, indeed, the gang didn’t cite an illegal order that Trump had given. However, some say the video responds to the Trump administration’s striking drug boats in the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea.
The video is a “Trojan horse,” he wrote:
A quiet insertion of doubt into the minds of the one group of Americans who cannot afford doubt:
The men and women who hold the line.
This type of rhetoric plants a subtle but dangerous seed:
“Maybe you shouldn’t trust your chain of command.”
“Am I doing the right thing?”
That is how you crack the foundation of the American military — not through force, but through confusion.
Not through violence, but through doubt.
Our military doesn’t run on politics.
It runs on trust… discipline… unity… and an oath that binds every service member to something higher than any politician’s ego.
When an elected official says something that undermines that trust — intentionally or not — that is a direct threat to national stability.
Meyer also spoke to Americans who wear the uniform of their country.
“DO NOT LISTEN TO THESE POLITICIANS,” he continued, noting the risk the service members are taking: a court-martial.
“If even one of you takes their advice, your life is the one destroyed — not theirs,” he wrote:
You will lose rank, benefits, retirement, career, freedom. They’ll leave you behind before the ink dries on your charges.
These politicians aren’t brave.
They’re not protecting you.
They’re using you.
When the consequences come, you will pay every cost.
Let’s hope none of you ever act on this because I can promise you: none of these politicians — especially judging by their records — have the backbone to stand beside you when your world burns.
On X, Meyer called out Kelly again.
“Thank God @SenMarkKelly isn’t in uniform anymore and thank God he wasn’t the aircraft commander of the Enola Gay in 1945,” he wrote:
A man this confused about duty and responsibility would’ve never had the conviction to make the decisions that ended a world war and saved American lives.
If you’re telling U.S. troops to defy orders… you’re not a leader.
You’re a political arsonist lighting matches in a dry forest.
Meyer’s Medal of Honor
Deployed to Afghanistan as an advisor to the Afghan army in 2009, then-Corporal Meyer was security at a rally patrol point when members of his unit and Afghan soldiers were ambushed. Meyer asked permission four times to rescue the men but was denied.
“With a fellow Marine driving, Corporal Meyer took the exposed gunner’s position in a gun-truck as they drove down the steeply terraced terrain in a daring attempt to disrupt the enemy attack and locate the trapped U.S. team,” his Medal of Honor citation says:
Disregarding intense enemy fire now concentrated on their lone vehicle, Corporal Meyer killed a number of enemy fighters with the mounted machine guns and his rifle, some at near point blank range, as he and his driver made three solo trips into the ambush area.
Meyer took a shrapnel wound to his arm, yet sallied into the murderous gunfire two more times. The battle lasted six hours.
He received the Medal of Honor in 2011.
