Jake Tapper Accidentally Exposed Mark Kelly’s ‘Illegal Orders’ Hypocrisy

For days now, Democrats have been crying foul over Trump's capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro. Despite years of Democrats literally calling for Maduro’s ouster, the party has completely flip-flopped, calling it an illegal operation, a war crime, and, of course, an impeachable offense.

Then, on Monday, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced that his department has launched formal disciplinary proceedings against Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) over the November 2025 video in which Kelly and five other Democrats urged service members to refuse what they portrayed as “illegal orders.”

As PJ Media previously reported, the department has already issued a formal Letter of Censure for Kelly’s “pattern of reckless misconduct,” to be placed permanently in his personnel file, and has given him 30 days to respond.

The timing here is almost poetic. As Kelly scrambles to defend his role in that video, his party is simultaneously accusing President Trump of carrying out an illegal act. That contradiction raises an obvious question. Do the Democrats who told U.S. troops to refuse “illegal orders” believe those same troops should have refused to take part in the strike that led to Nicolás Maduro’s capture?

Believe it or not, CNN's Jake Tapper interviewed Kelly on Tuesday and asked that very question. And let’s just say that Kelly’s response wasn’t very good.

"We've heard Democrats say that the operation in Venezuela was illegal," Tapper began. "Do you think it was illegal? And if so, should the service members who were part of that have refused to obey those orders?"

Kelly's answer was a mess of semantic gymnastics. "So what we were talking about in the video is about a service member being given a specific order and having to make a decision about whether this is lawful or not," Kelly stammered. "And this is like the reasonable person theory. What you're getting at is constitutional questions. Can a president try to do a law enforcement action on a head of state, but use 150 airplanes and the full force of the U.S. military to do that? So these are two different things."

No, they’re not, actually. Kelly is trying to have it both ways. He participated in a video telling troops that they could refuse orders they deemed illegal, yet when Tapper asked point-blank about an operation his fellow Democrats are literally calling illegal, he suddenly discovered a buttload of nuance.

Question: Democrats have said the Venezuela operation was illegal. Should service members have refused to obey those orders?

Kelly: That’s different from what I meant. pic.twitter.com/auUAhRmtJ2
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) January 7, 2026

This, of course, proves yet again that for Democrats, whether troops should follow orders depends on which party controls the White House.

It’s funny, isn’t it? Kelly casts himself as a victim here and talks tough, saying he won’t back down. Yet when pressed to apply his own standard to President Trump’s Venezuela operation, Kelly dodged like a coward. He avoided answering whether the action was illegal or whether troops should have refused those orders, retreating into some abstract constitutional talk.

It’s amusing to think that Tapper, of all people, exposed Kelly as a fraud. I'm sure he didn't mean to.

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