What Did the Right-Wing Think of “No Kings”?

Republicans had a problem having to say the words "No Kings" in order to denigrate it, as that would suggest there should be a king. So they needed to come up with a different name: the Hate America rally.

Do Trump devotees actually believe that people protesting a president who arrogates to himself the powers of a king hate America when they protest to preserve it? House Speaker Mike Johnson thinks so, and is shameless enough to promote the false name, saying…

"They're going to descend on our capital for their much anticipated so-called 'No Kings' rally. We refer to it by its more accurate description, the hate America rally."

That Johnson and Republicans are against Americans who are rightly alarmed by authoritarian Trump's outlaw actions says it is they who hate America for having no objection to Trump's destroying the nation's institutions.

And they surely do hate Americans. Here’s Johnson again:

”I encourage you to watch what we call the hate America rally that will happen Saturday. Let's see who shows up for that. I bet you'll see pro-Hamas supporters, I bet you'll see antifa types. I bet you’ll see the Marxists in full display, the people who don't want to stand and defend the foundational truth of this republic.”

That is exactly what they are doing. There’s Minnesota Representative Tom Emmer:

”We call it the hate America rally because you'll see the hate for America all over this thing when they show up.”

Or Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent:

“This crazy ‘No Kings’ rally this weekend is gonna be the farthest left, the hardest core, the most unhinged in the Democratic Party”

And Jesse Watters, who has the prime nighttime slot on Fox News:

"Like most progressive protests, it's just going to be a hodge-podge of crazies — the Hamas wing, the teachers union, transtifa, and the greenies."

Speaking for the president, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said:

"The Democrat party's main constituency are made up of Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens, and violent criminals. That is who the Democrat party is catering to, not the Trump administration."

At the memorial for Charlie Kirk, with the appalling impropriety of which only he is capable (at a memorial!), Trump reacted to Erika Kirk saying her husband did not hate his opponents thus:

”That’s where I disagree with Charlie. I hate my opponents and I don't want the best for them...I can't stand my opponents."

Part of the crowd erupted in laughter and cheers.

How is it not the right-wing who hates America if they are content to sit idly and watch the nation be wrecked from within?

In the week before, Trump made an attempt to create an alternate reality his ego needs saying,

"They have their day coming up. I hear very few people are going to be there, by the way."

Afterwards he said,

"The demonstrations were very small, very ineffective, and the people were whacked out."

That what is adjudged to be the largest peaceful demonstration in U.S. history, at an estimated seven million people, dwarfs the aggregate audience of every rally he has ever held, must have Trump seething, given his obsession with crowd size. His summation betrayed how divorced from the American people this supposedly populist president has become:

"I think it’s a joke. I looked at the people. They’re not representative of this country."

His America has become the billionaires that throng around him. A public that doesn't wear red MAGA caps look like an alien species.

How would right-wing news channels deal with the purported seven million protesting against the regime they so avidly champion? There were themes that recurred in the commentary among a number of hosts on the two networks. Just about all of them said Trump is no king; if he were, the rallies would not have been permitted. “You wouldn’t have people going on TV calling him a Nazi and you wouldn’t have the government shut down”, said Watters. That exposed an elemental incomprehension of what ‘No Kings” was about: Not that Trump is a king, but that his autocratic abuse of the presidency — ICE turned loose to grab people off the street, military in the cities, defiance of the courts, corruption on a scale never seen in any presidency, a list much longer – says he thinks he is free to act as if he were. After all, hadn't he said in a cabinet meeting, after soaking up raise from around the table that would acutely embarrass any normal man,

"I have the right to do anything I wanna do. I’m the President of the United States."

He had already said that in 2019, and inappropriately to an audience of young people, "I can do anything I want as president of the
United States". As the demonstrations were occurring, he said to reporters,

”I’m not a king, I work my ass off to make our country great. That’s all it is. I’m not a king at all."

The marchers were going on his actions, not his words. And didn't he just tear off the entire façade of the East Wing of the people's White House, our national heritage site, as if he were the king, free to do whatever he wants?

"Democrats love kings" was the peculiar meme that at least three of the eight shows we surveyed took up.

"Of course all these people are hypocrites. They call Trump a dictator when in fact Democrats are the ones who love ordering people around. What they did to our kids, our churches, our communities during COVID, forcing people to get the shots or they’d lose their job, destroying lives with their stupid, dangerous edicts."

That was Fox's Laura Ingraham's assessment. Greg Gutfeld of Fox’s “The Five” thinks...

"If you could measure authoritarianism, shutting down schools, parks, speech would make Joe Biden the king of kings."

They needed to deflect to Biden’s public health measures, hated by the right-wing and viewed as censorship, so as to gloss over Trump's authoritarian moves.

Watters forewarned that “When these things happen there's usually deaths, or fires, or both” which is what he was hoping for. But conservative channel hosts acknowledged that “No Kings” was peaceful across the country. The New York City Police Department made no arrests amid the crowds totaling a hundred thousand. "It was large, it was peaceful", confessed Will Cain on Newsmax.
Brit Hume on Bret Baier’s show at Fox: “They turned out a good crowd. In many cities there were thousands and thousands of people turned out”. Gutfeld said, “I will give credit where credit’s due. It was largely non-violent and non-confrontational.”

But the always confrontational Watters characterized the crowds as…

”Largely white, soft academic bodies who can afford to march for conceptual fears that don’t exist. Not real fears, like mugging, or car-jacking, or looting of their small businesses. They, however, god they’re so lucky.”

Watters is oblivious to the reason the citizenry has taken to the streets. There is nothing conceptual about the fears of Trump and his acolytes dismantling the government, ignoring the laws and the courts, filling the city streets with threatening armies.

To adapt Godwin's law about Hitler: if any online discussion continues long enough on conservative talk shows, someone will bring up George Soros. Talk radio host Jason Rantz as a guest on Fox’s “The Ingraham Angle” said “funding from George Soros and the Communist party of America” made the rallies happen. Rob Schmitt on Newsmax said they were:

”Funded by the darkest of money, the worst of money, intent on destabilizing the country. This money came in from people that want to see this entire country burned to the ground.”

Trump said to reporters,

“I looked at all the brand new signs. I guess it was paid for by Soros and other radical left lunatics. It looks like it was. We’re checking it out.“

If that were true, we would see many people holding identical printed signs. But all the video of the rallies running more or less constantly alongside the talking heads showed a total diversity of signs individually gotten up by marchers.

“It seems there are hundreds of organizations behind these protests”, said Ingraham, seemingly surprised that a coast-to-coast protest of millions needed to be organized. She and Rantz were indignant that “They used non-profit status to wage a war on Donald Trump” – tax-exempt 501 (c)(4) organizations that are supposed to be for social welfare. That was take-your-breath-away hypocrisy. Republicans use non-profits on a massive scale for political purposes. So do Democrats.

The shows had little to go on, so we saw the same motifs shared between them – the expected interviews of only individuals in the crowd singled out having no clue, one inscrutable hand-lettered sign shown repeatedly, and people in inflatable animal costumes, of course. Video of a line-dance group in yellow and black exhibiting unforgivable high spirits on a beautiful Saturday showed up in five of eight time slots.

But ultimately the right-wing commentators showed their contempt of those who might have different hopes for their country. No one evinced any realization that perhaps Donald Trump has gotten out of hand. Ingraham called them, “the dim-witted hypocrites at the No Kings rally.“ Newsmax’s Schmitt showed his unbridled hatred:

”These people are morons. And most of them are also communists. They worship an ideology that literally cannot survive without totalitarian enforcement. Pol Pot, Mao, Stalin, the heroes of so many out there screaming this weekend ‘no kings’”.

To characterize everyday Americans at this delusional extreme can only mean full acceptance of Trump’s fascism.

And finally, there is nothing to say about Trump’s AI video of him wearing a crown, dropping excrement on the crowds from a fighter jet, other than how embarrassing it is to have for president of our country a disgusting juvenile.