Donald Trump Asks Whether Democrats Are ‘Treasonous’ For Sitting Stone-Faced At SOTU, Everyone Panics

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump, speaking to a crowd in Ohio, asked whether his supporters believed that Democrats, who sat stone-faced during Trump’s State of the Union last week, could be considered “un-American,” and suggested that “somebody” has told him the opposition party’s behavior might even be “treasonous.”

“They would rather see Trump do badly, OK, than our country do well…it’s very selfish…even on positive news, really positive news like that, they were like death and Un-American. Un-American. Somebody said ‘treasonous,’” Trump riffed.

“I mean, yeah, I guess, why not?” he continued. “Can we call that treason? Why not. I mean, they certainly didn’t seem to love our country very much. But you look at that and it’s really very, very sad.”

The short answer to his question is “no, we cannot call that treason.” The implication got a few laughs, and it’s clear from context that Trump was joking – trying to get a rise out of an audience that he knew would agree with the sentiment, if not fully support calling the Democratic Party treasonous. It’s a concerning statement, and a dark turn of events; although the President has criticized his opponents before, the concept of charging them with “treason,” even if he’d never follow through with it, has meaning.

But as with many of Trump’s embarrassing off-the-cuff, out-of-thin-air outbursts, the response was as dramatic as Trump’s initial language. Panicked progressives and angry Democrats took to social media to decry the President’s tyrannical tendencies, take him to task for the sin of using a harsh word to describe their behavior, and jockey for position as the most outraged among the outraged.

In one particularly egregious case, Sen. Tammy Duckworth lashed out, reiterating an earlier insult for the President, “Cadet Bone Spurs.”

We don’t live in a dictatorship or a monarchy. I swore an oath—in the military and in the Senate—to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, not to mindlessly cater to the whims of Cadet Bone Spurs and clap when he demands I clap https://t.co/99gW1yalDl

— Tammy Duckworth (@SenDuckworth) February 6, 2018

There’s no way a man who has rarely lived up to the threats he makes in public speeches is even considering charging members of Congress with treason for simply sitting on their hands during a speech to a Joint Session. And he was wrong for making the statement. But is he really alone in the insult?

National Review’s Dan McLaughlin, who also took the President to task for his language, points out that over the last decade, many people have been using the word “treason” to describe behavior they don’t like, but which does not even border on the criminal – and some of the President’s harshet critics are guilty of it themselves.

McLaughlin quotes economist Paul Krugman calling “climate denial a form of treason,” former Vice President Joe Biden accusing Republicans of acting like terrorists over a bill to raise the debt limit. On the subject of the same bill, Sen. Chuck Schumer accused his opposition of rooting for the American economy to fail. President Obama’s senior adviser David Plouffe said Republicans were “committing economic treason” by forcing a partial government shutdown. Before Trump took office, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest even coyly suggested the Department of Justice should be consulted in regards to possible treason charges leveled against Trump’s team.

None of these examples makes Trump’s question any less egregious, but it does put the ensuing outrage into perspective: it’s not an insult, it’s a vicious cycle.