An estimated 7 million people turned out to more than 2,700 “No Kings” anti-authoritarian protests across the country on Saturday, according to organizers. If estimates are correct, it would be one of the largest one-day protests in American history. Although the rallies were peaceful and even joyful, that didn’t stop figures on the right, including the president, from having outsized reactions to the day’s events.
The award for most ridiculous reaction goes to the president. On Truth Social, Donald Trump shared an apparently AI-generated video in which an AI version of himself pilots a military fighter jet, while wearing a crown, over a crowd of protesters. In the video, AI Trump then dumps shit on people participating in the protest. He also reposted multiple images depicting himself as a king.
Vice President J.D. Vance and The White House social media accounts joined in. Vance posted a video on X (formerly Twitter) of Trump donning a crown and wielding a sword over Democrats, using footage from when Democratic lawmakers kneeled in the Capitol to honor George Floyd. The White House account meanwhile shared an image of Trump and Vance in crowns sitting on a throne above an offensive, doctored image of Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries wearing sombreros.
Those memes seem to contradict the president’s remarks on Friday, when he told Fox News: “They say they’re referring to me as a king. I’m not a king.”
Deirdre Schifeling of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) expected this kind of conservative backlash, telling Politico, “They might try to paint this weekend’s events as something dangerous to our society, but the reality is there is nothing unlawful or unsafe about organizing and attending peaceful protests. It’s the most patriotic and American thing you can do, and we have a 250-year-old history of disagreeing in public.”
Some Republican members of Congress got in on the action, too. GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson begrudgingly lauded the protests on Sunday for being a “violent-free, free speech exercise” after last week when he referred to the events as “hate America” rallies. But Johnson went on to claim that “there were a lot of hateful messages” at the gatherings.
“We have video and photos of pretty violent rhetoric, calling out the president, saying fascists must die and all the rest,” Johnson said on ABC’s This Week. “I mean, I don’t think that’s loving speech. I don’t think that’s friendly speech. And I don’t think it’s pro-American to say those kinds of things.”
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It’s telling that for Johnson, being anti-fascist is anti-American.
After host Jonathan Karl pushed back on Johnson’s characterization of the resistance, Johnson said, “I never said it was the whole Democratic Party, but you and I have to acknowledge the reality.”
GOP Rep. Virginia Foxx kept her comment on the marches simple: “Donald J. Trump is your president. Cry more, losers.”
Republican Rep. Nicole Malliotakis also tried to characterize the protests as being organized by “radical left” groups, claiming that anyone who showed up aligned themselves with “the communist party.”
In reality, No Kings is a constellation of liberal and left-leaning organizations and advocacy groups, including the ACLU, Indivisible, the American Federation of Teachers, the Human Rights Campaign, Public Citizen, the League of Conservation Voters, and more. It appears that local chapters affiliated with the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) may have participated in local events, as they did at similar No Kings protests last summer when, just like this past Saturday, a diverse range of groups came together in a common message opposing authoritarianism.
Perhaps the most telling of part of the right’s reaction to the protests is the deafening silence coming from the vast majority of prominent conservatives, especially those who fear-mongered about the rallies, calling participants “terrorists” and “anti-American” in the week before the events.
This messaging is all part of Trump and the right’s attempts to erase the well-documented history of right-wing violence by claiming left-wing violence is one of the greatest threats America faces, even if the data fails to bear that out. As the Brennan Center’s Faiza Patel pointed out, by targeting left-wing organizing, Trump is attempting to criminalize those who oppose him.
From Rolling Stone US
