{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.kelly.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/kelly-ive-been-through-a-lot-worse-in-service-to-my-country-the-president-and-pete-hegseth-arent-going-to-silence-me/", "Kelly: \u201cI\u2019ve been through a lot worse in service to my country. The president and Pete Hegseth aren\u2019t going to silence me\u201d", "2025-12-01", "2025", "2025-12", "Democrat", "Senate", "AZ", "Mark Kelly", "K000377", "www.kelly.senate.gov", "markkelly", "https://www.kelly.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/", "scraper", "Today, Arizona Senator Mark Kelly held a press conference on Capitol Hill to speak out about President Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth\u2019s efforts to intimidate him and stop him from holding them accountable.\n\nSen. Kelly speaks on Capitol Hill.\n\nWatch the full press conference here. See key excerpts below:\n\nKelly contrasted his lifetime of service to the country to Trump\u2019s public record and said he will continue speaking out: \u201cIn 1991, when Donald Trump was driving the Taj Mahal Casino into bankruptcy, I was getting shot at over Iraq and Kuwait. In 2001, after Donald Trump said that the collapse of the Twin Towers meant he now owned the tallest skyscraper in Manhattan, I was carrying flags honoring 9/11 victims into space on a rocket ship. In 2003, when Donald Trump was writing birthday greetings to the monster Jeffrey Epstein, I was the first on the scene to recover the bodies of my fellow astronauts who died when Space Shuttle Columbia exploded. In 2011, when Trump was hosting a reality show and pushing conspiracies against President Barack Obama, I was sitting next to my wife\u2019s hospital bed as she recovered from a gunshot to the head.\n\n\u201cMy point is this: I\u2019ve been through a lot worse in service to my country. The president and Pete Hegseth aren\u2019t going to silence me. They aren\u2019t going to keep me from speaking out. And they aren\u2019t going to stop me from doing my job. Enough of the bullying. Enough of the intimidation. Enough of the threats. Enough of the nonsense. It doesn\u2019t help anyone in America afford their groceries or pay their medical bills. And it erodes the rights of every American. My job is to fight for them and to stand up for the Constitution. And nothing is going to stop me from doing my job.\u201d\n\nKelly highlighted Trump\u2019s longstanding tactic of bullying his opponents into silence: \u201cThroughout his entire career\u2014in business, reality TV, and politics\u2014Donald Trump has had one and only one play: bully his opponents into silence. He did it as a failed casino owner who bankrupted his properties and screwed over his contractors. He did it as a reality TV host known for firing people. And he has done it as a President who tries every day to intimidate people, with no regard for the rights or well-being of the American people.\n\n\u201cI\u2019ll say this for him: while he\u2019s never seemed to do much else right, for most of Donald Trump\u2019s career, bullying people has worked out for him. But not now. Because I won\u2019t let it. The American people won\u2019t let it. President Trump is trying to silence me\u2014threatening to kill me\u2014 for saying what is true. He\u2019s sent his Secretary of Defense after me. And it\u2019s not going to work.\u201d\n\nKelly condemned the administration\u2019s abuse of power: \u201cTrump and Hegseth care more about publicity than they do about the rule of law. That\u2019s how I ended up finding out via a tweet that the Secretary of Defense was ordering an investigation into me. The same Secretary of Defense who has, from the moment he was nominated, been historically unqualified for this role. The same Secretary of Defense who is reported to have ordered a second strike to kill shipwrecked survivors in the Caribbean. If there is anyone who needs to answer questions in public and under oath, it\u2019s Pete Hegseth.\u201d\n\nKelly further made clear this isn\u2019t about him, but about who the president will try to bully into silence next: \u201cIt\u2019s not about me. It\u2019s not about the other five members in the video. [\u2026] This is about a president who doesn\u2019t want anybody to say anything that he does not like. I don\u2019t think he understands the Constitution. I\u2019m serious about this. I think he is ignorant to the Constitution and the rule of law. And he just wants to silence us, and it starts with us. And that\u2019s one of the reasons people say, \u2018well, why wouldn\u2019t you like, just back off?\u2019 Because this isn\u2019t about me. This is about what he will do next. Who\u2019s he going to go after next? Which servicemember? Which government employee? Which citizen who decides to say something that this president doesn\u2019t like? And then he goes after them, in my case, with the Secretary of Defense. Who knows what\u2019s next? With the attorney general? This DOJ has been just attacking people for all kinds of stuff. And what\u2019s next? Our First Amendment rights? Ain\u2019t happening.\u201d", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T20:09:11Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.kelly.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/kelly-ive-been-through-a-lot-worse-in-service-to-my-country-the-president-and-pete-hegseth-arent-going-to-silence-me/"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.7235390841960907, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}