Malcolm Ferguson, The New Republic:

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt says “all orders” from President Trump are “lawful orders,” and troops have no right to question him.

“All lawful—all orders—lawful orders are presumed to be legal by our service members. You can’t have a functioning military if there is disorder and chaos within the ranks,” Leavitt told reporters outside the White House on Monday. “And that’s what these Democrat members were encouraging. It’s very clear. And not a single one of them since they’ve been pressed by the media … can point to a single illegal order that this administration has given down because it does not exist.

“You can’t have a soldier out on the battlefield or conducting a classified order questioning whether that order is lawful or whether they should follow through,” Leavitt argued earlier, in a twisted reading of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

If those members of Congress had said “you can refuse to eat poisoned food,” Leavitt would insist “all food from this White House is presumed to be safe and no one can point to a single poisoned meal from this administration.”

Setting aside the reality that military members are legally and morally obligated to refuse illegal orders, this regime is telling on itself by taking a factual statement about defying illegal orders and insisting it’s about defying legal orders. To declare that these congresspeople said the opposite of what they did—and to further assert that every order from the president is legal—is disturbingly Orwellian, even for a regime that revels in doublethink. There’s clear consciousness of guilt in their over-the-top protestations.