The moment President Trump called out a handful of Democrats for flirting with sedition and treason — and had the audacity to mention the penalties that come with those crimes — you just knew the media would lose its collective mind.

The press didn’t waste a second before clutching its pearls and piling on, acting as though pointing out the obvious is somehow beyond the pale – not over the possibility that Democrats might actually be dabbling in seditious behavior that bothers the media — it’s that Trump dared to say it out loud.

This is classic media sleight of hand. They immediately shift the spotlight away from Democratic misconduct and toward scolding Trump, because protecting the Left is their full-time job. At this point, they might as well drop the pretense of neutrality and print “Paid for by the DNC” on their mastheads. No one would be surprised.

What was a bit unexpected was House Speaker Mike Johnson offering at least some defense of Trump’s comments, pointing out that the President was simply defining the terms — while Democrats, meanwhile, have been engaging in behavior that he called “wildly inappropriate.”

Just as a reminder, this is the video that started all of this:

The wording in their video is anything but accidental. They avoid saying “President Trump” outright, but their pointed references to “this administration” leave no doubt about whom they’re targeting.

They dance around the specifics of which orders they want defied, but then slip in claims about directives that supposedly “pit our uniformed military and intelligence community professionals against American citizens.” That’s not subtle — it’s a dog whistle. What they’re really doing is encouraging service members to ignore lawful orders related to enforcing immigration law and restoring order in blue cities that have been hollowed out by crime and progressive policies. It’s an astonishing — and dangerous — call for selective obedience, wrapped in patriotic language.

They’re almost certainly taking aim at the President’s orders to take decisive action against narco-terrorists — including destroying cartel boats used for drug trafficking — as well as other defensive measures authorized by the President and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth to protect American citizens.

The Democrats’ excuse is that they’re only urging troops to defy “illegal orders.” But here’s the sleight of hand: they want service members themselves — not military lawyers, not commanders, not courts — to unilaterally decide what’s illegal. That’s a dangerous line to cross. There’s a massive difference between refusing a manifestly illegal order and refusing an order simply because you personally feel uneasy about it. The latter is itself a violation of military law.

They weren’t subtle in the slightest — and President Trump, never one to mince words, responded on Truth Social. He blasted the actions of the lawmakers involved — Sen. Elissa Slotkin, Sen. Mark Kelly, and Reps. Chris Deluzio, Chrissy Houlahan, Maggie Goodlander, and Jason Crow — calling what they did “seditious behavior punishable by death.”

Sensing a chance to stir up GOP infighting, reporters immediately turned to Speaker Mike Johnson for comment. But Johnson didn’t bite. He made clear that the real problem isn’t Trump calling out sedition — it’s the lawmakers openly encouraging it.

“What I read was he was defining the crime of sedition,” Johnson said. “That is a factual statement. But obviously, attorneys have to parse the language and determine all that.”

That was exactly the way to handle this. The Speaker then lit into the Democrats for what they did, saying it was a “wildly inappropriate thing for so-called leaders in Congress to do to encourage young troops to disobey orders.”

He wasn’t done.

“For a senator like Mark Kelly or any member of the House or Senate to behave in that kind of talk is to me so just beyond the pale,” he said before concluding, “I’m not going to say anything more on it.”

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt delivered her own blistering rebuke on Thursday, tearing into the media for obsessing over Trump’s reaction while completely ignoring the fact that Democrats are openly urging the military to defy the Commander-in-Chief.