Donald Trump’s threats against Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly have only served to elevate the decorated combat veteran as a hero in the Democratic Party.
WASHINGTON — As threats against members of Congress skyrocketed in recent years, some lawmakers have required added security while going to and from their jobs on Capitol Hill.
But Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) may be the first lawmaker to need personal armed guards specifically because of threats made against him by the president of the United States.
After Donald Trump called him a traitor and suggested he be hanged for telling service members that they can disobey illegal orders, Kelly’s office received graphic threats not only on his life, but on that of his wife, former Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-Ariz.), who survived a gunshot to the head in a politically motivated mass shooting nearly 15 years ago, fueling the couple’s advocacy for gun violence prevention ever since.
In an interview with HuffPost this week, Kelly said he’d never imagined that he would now be the one in the crosshairs, walking around the U.S. Capitol with a security detail, something normally reserved only for congressional leadership.
“I understand political violence pretty well,” Kelly said in an interview with HuffPost. “It’s something my family’s dealt with. It’s something the president has dealt with, and his family has dealt with. He should get it. He shouldn’t be threatening to hang U.S. senators.”
“I think it’s rather pretty unique to him in the history of our country, of all the presidents that have come before, he’s probably the only one who has threatened to kill a senator,” he added.
Kelly has a visceral reminder at his side of what that kind of rhetoric can lead to. The head of his new security detail is an officer who was also on his wife’s detail after she was shot. The officer spent months protecting Giffords, including standing outside her hospital door while she recovered and underwent months of physical and speech therapy.
Since Trump’s attacks began, both Sen. Mark Kelly and his wife, former Rep. Gabby Giffords, who survived an assassination attempt, have received an influx of threats.
PATRICK T. FALLON via Getty Images
Since appearing in a video last month with other Democratic lawmakers reminding the military they can defy illegal orders, something that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth himself acknowledged in 2016 , Kelly has seemingly been everywhere, blanketing cable news and late-night talk shows to slam Trump and Hegseth for their handling of military strikes against suspected drug traffickers in the Caribbean Sea. He’s called both men unqualified for their office, dismissed their attempts to silence him as “ridiculous” and “embarrassing,” and insisted he won’t be bullied into backing down.
The row with Trump has earned Kelly the kind of national attention that other Democrats also eyeing a run for the presidency can only dream of. As a former astronaut and decorated U.S. Navy veteran of 25 years who flew combat missions in the Middle East, and as a Democrat from a battleground state, Kelly would make a compelling candidate if he decides to enter what will likely be a crowded race to succeed Trump in 2028.
“They’ve chosen the wrong guy to make a target here,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) told HuffPost. “He is resisting this attempt to silence and stifle him with courage.”
“I think this only points out, number one, his experience, but also his reputation,” added fellow Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), who is also viewed as a potential Democratic presidential contender in 2028. “So I think it is backfiring on them.”
Republican senators said the video Kelly and other Democratic lawmakers recorded was unnecessarily inflammatory, but they acknowledged that Trump’s inability to let things lie has only served to elevate Kelly as a hero in the Democratic Party and set him up for a run for higher office.
“I think that it’s playing right into the Democrats’ hand. I think that’s why they did the video to begin with,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) told HuffPost, calling it “rage bait” — the new Oxford dictionary word of the year — that Trump simply couldn’t ignore.
Asked what he made of Republicans and other pundits suggesting he was laying the groundwork for a presidential run, Kelly declined to directly answer. He said he recorded the video as a “friendly reminder’ to service members of their legal obligations as Trump deploys National Guard troops into U.S. cities and threatens war against Venezuela.
“We wanted to send a message to members of the military that we have your back, and just give them a friendly reminder, because as I view the situation we’re in, we’ve got a president that talks about killing people and has talked about shooting protesters in the legs, and said the military will not refuse his orders, even when they’re illegal,” Kelly told HuffPost.
Mark Kelly and his identical twin, Scott, who also served as an astronaut, stand together before a news conference in 2016 in Houston.
