Apparently up to 7 million people came out on No Kings Day to protest the policies of the Trump administration, yet both Republicans and legacy media downplayed the significance of the event. When asked about the massive numbers who attended the rallies, a White House spokeswoman responded, “Who cares?” President Trump acted - well, Trump-like - in posting an AI response that has all the markings of a petulant 12 year old boy.
When asked about it, the President said the No Kings Day crowds were “small and very ineffective.” He even said he people at the rallies “were not representative of this country.” The President says what he wants to be true as though it is true, because to him that’s the only truth that matters. In the movie The Apprentice, Roy Cohen tells Trump there is no Truth with a capital T.
But facts remains facts. People rose up on Saturday, and 7 million is no small number. The fact that Republican leaders chose to minimize the importance of the day is no surprise; the fact that so many print and TV legacy news sources chose to do the same is genuinely disturbing. It’s a message that rings loud and clear: the voice of the people matters less and less in a world where money talks so loudly. But the message mattered nevertheless, even if only to those of us who participated. The composite video above provides examples of people I spoke to at one of the rallies in Los Angeles, all of them filled with a fierce and decent dedication to our democracy. There was a spirit to the day, and the glow lasted through the weekend.
One thing is clear, however, based on today’s news coverage. The system still doesn’t give a damn, and we’re going to have to do a whole lot more to disrupt the trajectory of what’s happening now. Violence of any kind is a terrible and totally unacceptable idea, primarily for moral but also for strategic reasons. Yet none of us should be naive. The Trump administration is on an authoritarian roll, and we the people will be challenged in the days ahead, every single one of us, to rise to the occasion in ways we might never have imagined. There will be more to do. Law firms caved. Media companies caved. Universities caved. Tech billionaires caved.
We must not cave. The great ones never do.
