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GOP senator grilled over Trump attacks on Mark Kelly

In an interview Sunday on ABC News’ “This Week,” Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) described an awkward moment with Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) when he faced objection from President Trump over a video telling soldiers not to obey illegal orders.

The video, released by Kelly and five other lawmakers in November, was described as a “provocative” act by Trump, who said in a post on Truth Social that elected officials could be punished with death for opposing his administration.

At the time, Young and Kelly were working on legislation together.

“My first reaction was to text Mark and have a conversation that morning. And we kind of bounced back and forth about what I should do, how I should react, where this would go — it’s an exchange I’ll keep private —,” Young told host Jonathan Karl, describing his first moves after Trump attacked Kelly on Truth Social.

“And it shows that it’s really important to build trust in solidarity among your colleagues, even during what I know is a difficult time for Mark. And as we develop that partnership, I like to think that it leads to constructive action on issues like shipbuilding,” the Indiana senator added.

Young said the reaction Kelly received from Trump could be considered a “singular moment.”

“There are times when a person needs to speak up when they feel strongly about certain issues. This was a situation where we could say this had to be a truly unique moment,” Young said.

“But remember there are trade-offs — and this goes back to what Mark was talking about, which is that it’s very difficult to navigate the shallows and evaluate the moral calculus in a moment and evaluate when you need to go to the wall, so to speak,” he continued.

Kelly said a colleague compared Trump’s victimization to a “food fight” and that he would intervene if the conflict turned into a “knife fight.”

Kelly and Young’s ABC interview focused largely on Trump’s handling of grievances in his second administration and touched on the issue of the president’s removal of incumbent lawmakers who oppose his legislative agenda by supporting his rivals in the primary.

Young said of the effort launched by Trump: “In a way, you can’t blame the President for using the influence he has to influence the agenda he was elected to implement. He’s a master of social media. He has more loyal political followers than I’ve ever encountered in politics. And he used them.”

“We have never in my lifetime seen a president have these tools, this kind of influence over Congress. And does that require a more sophisticated, more agile, kind of public leadership? I think it does, yes, but that in no way absolves myself or any of my colleagues, Republican or Democrat, from the institution that we have. We still have to make sacrifices when we feel that the public good can be advanced through personal sacrifice,” he added.

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