Senator Elizabeth Warren did not hold back on The Late Show last night, delivering a blistering attack on the Republican Party, accusing them of being “surgically altered and have no spines” for their silence following Donald Trump’s calls to execute Congressional members. The controversy centers on a video where Democratic military veterans reminded active service members of their constitutional duty to disobey illegal orders.
The crux of the issue, as framed by Colbert and Warren, is the danger of political manipulation within the military. The veteran lawmakers—including “Alyssa” and “Jason”—released the video to protect service members from being coerced into executing unconstitutional orders under a potentially hostile administration.
Colbert emphasized the gravity of the video’s message: “Trump may be immune to prosecution, you are not. For your own protection, do not follow the illegal order.” This message highlights the fundamental ethical distinction between political immunity and military accountability.
Warren lauded the lawmakers, saying “good on them for standing up,” but reserved her fiercest condemnation for the Republican Party’s calculated silence. She argued that their failure to condemn Trump’s rhetoric—which involved calling the message seditious and amplifying calls for lawmakers to be hanged—is a catastrophic moral failure.
The Senator asserted that the time for neutrality is over, quoting her colleague Senator Chris Murphy: “now’s the time for somebody to take a fucking side.”
Warren’s use of sharp language to describe the GOP’s inertia—“surgically altered and have no spines”—was a direct attempt to shame fence-sitting Republicans into action. She insisted that the violence and death threats against members of Congress cannot be tolerated in silence. By calling on Republicans to publicly state that “that is enough” and that they “are not doing this and we’re not going to put up with it anymore,” Warren is attempting to force a dramatic schism within the GOP, forcing members to choose between loyalty to Trump and adherence to democratic principles. The late-night appearance transformed the constitutional debate into an immediate moral referendum on the Republican Party’s willingness to tolerate threats against its own members.
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