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During a Sunday interview on ABC News’s “This Week,” Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) addressed an awkward moment with Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) while he was facing pushback from President Trump over a video directing servicemembers not to follow illegal orders.
The video released by Kelly and five other lawmakers in November was described as a “seditious” act by Trump, who also said elected officials could be punished by death for bucking his administration, in a post on Truth Social.
At the time, Young and Kelly were working on a piece of legislation together.
“My first reaction was to text Mark and engage in a dialogue that very morning. And we had an exchange back and forth — an exchange which I will keep private — about what I should do, how I should respond, where this led, and so forth,” Young told host Jonathan Karl, recounting his first moves after Trump attacked Kelly on Truth Social.
“And so, it demonstrates that it’s really important to develop trust among your colleagues in solidarity, even during what I know was a difficult time for Mark. And I like to think, because we’ve developed that partnership, it leads to constructive action on things like shipbuilding,” the Indiana senator added.
Young said the blowback Kelly received from Trump could be considered a “singular moment.”
“There are times when one must speak up when you feel strongly about things. That was a case when one could fairly say that should have been the singular moment,” Young said.
“But just keep in mind that there are trade-offs — and this gets back to what Mark was talking about. It’s very difficult, this job, to navigate the shoals and assess the moral calculus in a moment and assess when you should go to the wall, so to speak,” he continued.
Kelly said one colleague compared Trump’s grievance to a “food fight” and said he would step in if the conflict escalated to a “knife fight.”
Kelly and Young’s ABC interview largely focused on how Trump is addressing grievances in his second administration and ventured to the topic of the president ousting incumbent lawmakers who buck his legislative agenda by backing their challengers in the primary.
“In a sense, you can’t fault the president for using the leverage he has to affect the agenda he was elected to implement. He is a master of social media. He has more loyal political followers than I’ve ever encountered in political life. And he’s used those,” Young said of the effort launched by Trump.
“We’ve never seen a president have those tools, have that sort of leverage against Congress before in my lifetime. And so, does it require a more sophisticated, more nimble, sort of public leadership? I think it does, yes, but that in no way absolves myself or any of my colleagues — Republican or Democrat — from the agency we have. We still need to sacrifice when we feel like the common good can be advanced through personal sacrifice,” he added.
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