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‘They’ve Chosen The Wrong Guy’: Mark Kelly Rises As Foil To Trump

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.

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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.

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.

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“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.

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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.

Kelly, 61, was first elected to the Senate in 2020, winning a special election to replace the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), another veteran on the receiving end of Trump’s attacks. He won reelection in 2022, defeating Republican challenger Blake Masters. In 2024, he was considered as a vice presidential running mate for Democratic presidential contender Kamala Harris. (Kelly is up for reelection in 2028, which could potentially pose a barrier to a presidential bid.)

Kelly’s seeming preparedness for a presidential run goes beyond defense issues — he’s rolled out a plan to deal with the transition to artificial intelligence, which is likely to be a top issue in the 2028 race, and was pitching it at the Center for American Progress on Thursday morning. He also traveled to South Carolina, which will likely be one of the first states to vote in the 2028 primaries, for the 10th anniversary of the Mother Emanuel AME Church shooting in June.

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And he’s started making the podcast rounds, appearing with figures as disparate as investigative sports journalist Pablo Torre and right-wing commentator Bari Weiss, to discuss political violence.

But it’s his positions on both the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Senate Intelligence Committee that have given him the high-profile job conducting oversight of the Trump administration’s national security policies.

The retired Navy fighter pilot has faced a barrage of attacks from Trump, who said he and the other five Democratic lawmakers who participated in the video message to the troops were guilty of “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH.” The president then shared a post online calling for their hanging.

Hegseth, meanwhile, has asked the Navy secretary to review Kelly’s comments in the video for “potentially unlawful conduct,” suggesting he could face a court-martial. The senator maintains he did nothing wrong and that he only learned about the investigation from an online post.

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“He tweeted something, that’s how I got notified. That’s all I’ve heard from the Navy, and that says everything about Pete Hegseth,” the senator told CNN this week. Later, in another CNN appearance, he accused Hegseth of being focused on seeing “how many views he can get on Twitter,” adding, “that’s what he cares about — he doesn’t care about the law or process.”

Kelly has heard from Republican colleagues who agree with him. Only a few have stepped up to defend him in public, however.

“Mark Kelly’s a great friend, a great Senate member, and brings lots of contributions to this body,” Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah) told HuffPost when asked about Trump’s attacks.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), meanwhile, called the Pentagon investigation of Kelly “frivolous.”

“To accuse him and other lawmakers of treason and sedition for rightfully pointing out that servicemembers can refuse illegal orders is reckless and flat-out wrong,” she added.

Hegseth has requested to be briefed by next week on the results of a Pentagon review into Kelly’s rhetoric. The FBI, meanwhile, has launched a separate probe into Kelly and the other Democrats in the video and is considering investigating them for seditious conspiracy, according to Bloomberg.

But Kelly has shown no signs of backing down. Earlier this week, he convened a press conference at the Capitol where he contrasted his record with that of Trump in a stemwinder one might hear on the campaign trail one day.

“In 1991, when Donald Trump was driving the Taj Mahal casino into bankruptcy, I was getting shot at over Iraq and Kuwait,” he said on Monday. “In 2001, after Donald Trump said that the collapse of the Twin Towers meant he now owned the tallest skyscraper in Manhattan, I was carrying flags honoring 9/11 victims into space on a rocket ship.”

“In 2003, when Trump was writing birthday greetings to the monster Jeffrey Epstein, I was the first on the scene to recover the bodies of my fellow astronauts who died when Space Shuttle Columbia exploded on reentry,” he continued. “In 2011, when Trump was peddling conspiracy theories against President Barack Obama, I was sitting next to my wife’s hospital bed as she recovered from a gunshot wound to the head.”

“My point is this: I’ve been through a lot worse in service to my country,” he added. “The president and Pete Hegseth are not going to silence me.”