Sen. Mark Kelly has a message for President Donald Trump.
On the eve of the State of the Union, the Arizona Democrat told The Pavlovic Today that, despite Trump’s efforts to indict him, he intends to attend the address.
Kelly’s State of the Union appearance in the House chamber is both symbolic and constitutional. He remains adamant that he will continue to carry out his duties regardless of what the president says or thinks.
“I’m going to go to the State of the Union tomorrow. The President tried to throw me in jail, like two weeks ago—they tried to indict me. Trump wants me to be sitting in prison right now. So I’m going to be sitting there as one of the senators from Arizona, as a representative of Arizona, to show him I’m not in prison. I’m here doing my job and will continue to do my job, regardless of what he thinks he can do,” Kelly told The Pavlovic Today during a Senate press gaggle.
“He’s not going to prevent me from exercising my constitutional rights,” he added.
“I said something that he didn’t like. He said I should be hanged,” Kelly referred to President Trump’s response to the video he appeared in alongside five other Democrats encouraging active-duty military and intelligence personnel to refuse “illegal” orders.
A grand jury declined to indict Kelly last week after being presented with evidence from prosecutors. U.S. District Judge Richard Leon also blocked the Pentagon’s efforts to censure the senator and lower his retirement rank in the wake of the video.
“So the guy he wanted to hang in November, the guy he wanted to throw into prison two weeks ago and tried to indict federally at a grand jury, is going to be sitting there right in front of him,” Kelly said. “My message is that I’m going to stand up for my constituents. I’m going to continue to do my job, regardless of what he says or thinks.”
Kelly’s next move?
Asked by The Pavlovic Today about his recent statement that he is “strongly considering” a presidential campaign, Mark Kelly did not close the door.
“I have not decided yet,” he said.
Pressed on what he would do differently from President Donald Trump if he entered the race, Kelly said the president “should understand that we’ve got tremendous challenges ahead.”
Fresh from a tour of European capitals including the Munich Security Conference, Kelly painted a picture not of swaggering American dominance, but of uneasy alliances and fraying trust.
Referring to Secretary Marco Rubio’s speech in Munich, Kelly said what stood out was not only what was said, but what was missing. He described the address as “better” than JD Vance’s a year earlier, but noted it contained “little mention of China,” which he called the central challenge.
“China can build more stuff,” Kelly said. Ships, airplanes, missile systems, satellites—the inventory recited almost clinically. “They build more than we do right now,” he continued. “There’s some areas where we still have an advantage, like lift to Low Earth Orbit, Medium Earth Orbit, things like that. They’re catching up there as well. If we think we’re going to be in a conflict, and by the way, I don’t think conflict with China is inevitable. It’s a conflict that there’s going to likely be no winner, right both sides lose.”
Having laid out the risk, Kelly turned to what he sees as the United States’ enduring advantage.
“Our strength is in our partnerships, it’s that we have people that come to our aid, you know, like Denmark, like the UK, like France. We were attacked on 911 they came to help us. What I felt in those rooms there in Munich, I think it’s going to be a lot harder to get them to come to our aid here in the future if we continue on this path that this President has set us on. So I mean, what do we need to do? We need to repair these relationships and show that we’re reliable partner, and then we can help each other.”
Alliances fractured
At the heart of the challenge, in Mark Kelly’s telling, is a shift in the attitude of America’s traditional allies—one he said was evident in his conversations with European leaders at the Munich Security Conference.
“They’re incredibly disappointed,” Kelly said, adding that it was “a little bit depressing” to witness the erosion of a relationship built over decades. Senator shared that it was “a little bit depressing” to see that “Donald Trump, blew up this relationship that took 80 years to build.” The alliance had not collapsed, exactly, but had been, in his telling, “practically burned to the ground” in a matter of months.
In Munch, Kelly met with the Danish Prime Minister and the Prime Minister of Greenland. “If you’re Greenland,” he said, “they’re afraid of us.” Prime Minister of Denmark shared with Senator Kelly that China now polls more favorably than the United States, and that US favorability in Poland went down 21 points.
The solution, as he framed it, is neither rhetorical nor immediate. Relationships with allies would need to be rebuilt, trust restored, reliability demonstrated again over time. “When we get to the other side of this President,” he said, “we can start to rebuild.” The relationship with Denmark alone “is going to take a long time to repair.”
And in saying so, Kelly has positioned himself as a direct counterpoint to the politics of Donald Trump.
The question, as ever in Washington, is not merely whether Kelly will run.
It is whether he can afford not to.
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