No Kings was a huge success. Just look at Trump's response.
Turnout was enormous. There was no violence. And the wannabe king is triggered.
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Before the No Kings rallies that took place across the country on Saturday, Republicans were desperate to convince Americans that the event should be discounted, ignored, or greeted with horror and contempt.
This was to be a “hate America” demonstration, they all said. “I bet you’ll see Hamas supporters, I bet you’ll see antifa types, I bet you’ll see the Marxists on full display,” said Speaker of the House Mike Johnson. It was sure to devolve into ugly violence, revealing the left in all its depravity.
In the end, No Kings did indeed reveal the American left for what it is: angry, joyful, determined, silly, organized, creative, cacophonous, committed — all of it and more. The left contains multitudes. But the effect of No Kings goes far beyond refuting the ridiculous caricatures President Trump and his allies have tried to fashion. In fact, this protest could turn out to be even more successful than its organizers hoped.
That’s not just because of the protest’s extraordinary size and reach, though that’s where it starts.
Organizers put the number of participants at seven million across more than 2,600 locations, though other estimates vary. G. Elliot Morris, for instance, estimates that the number could have exceeded eight million but may be closer to five million. Nevertheless, Morris writes, “regardless of whether the precise number is 5, 6, 7, or 8 million, Saturday’s events are very likely the biggest single-day protest event since 1970, surpassing even the 2017 Women’s March demonstrations against Trump.”
Just as meaningful as the huge rallies in New York, Washington, and Los Angeles were the smaller but still sizable gatherings that took place in every corner of the country. No Kings was just about everywhere, in urban and rural areas, big cities and small towns, and every state. Everything Republicans said it would be — violent, terroristic, unpatriotic — turned out to be undeniably false.
Yes, protests matter
Protests are only one kind of political action among many, but they have two key effects, one external and one internal. They can change how the public sees the opposition, and how people in that opposition see themselves.
Regardless of what you think of the messages contained therein, No Kings offered visual evidence that huge numbers of people oppose President Trump. This was one vivid expression of a vital truth of our political moment: Most Americans don’t like Trump and don’t like what he’s doing. Polling makes that more than clear, but public opinion is manifest in many ways, one of which is when a significant number of people feel strongly enough to move their bodies and voices together.
Think of all the times we’ve heard the administration and its advocates claim Trump has a “mandate” for dismantling government capacity and assaulting democracy, and how often Trump has claimed his narrow 2024 win was actually the most sweeping victory in electoral history. The point is to say, Just about everyone is on board with this, and if you aren’t you should shut up. We are the sole possessors of true democratic legitimacy, and the opposition is nothing more than a small minority of extremists and cranks. The next time they say that, the memory of millions turning out to protest them will be the most effective rejoinder.
Just as important, a protest like No Kings builds a sense of efficacy among its participants — the feeling that they have the ability to be political actors, not just observers. And it does so in ways that create connection and community. Those who went to a No Kings event might have put their email address on a contact list so they can be mobilized again, but if nothing else they stood with other people in their community and felt that sense of mutual purpose. It may feel corny to call that “empowering,” but that feeling is what movements are built on.
In my years of writing about politics, there’s one question I’ve gotten more than any other from readers, attendees at bookstore events, and my own friends and family: “But what can we do?” It’s an earnest question born of a dilemma faced by every member of a giant democratic polity such as ours.
We’re more attuned than ever to the goings-on in politics and government; the average American living 50 or 100 or 150 years ago had access to a tiny fraction of the information we do about what’s actually happening. You could spend every waking minute keeping track of the Trump administration’s depredations, and you might fall into a helpless combination of rage and frustration. You’re just one citizen with one vote, maybe a few extra dollars to donate, and perhaps a social media presence where you speak to those who already agree with you. Like gazing up at the stars, it can make you feel small and inconsequential.
Which is precisely why events like No Kings are so important.
A single protest does not sweep a tyrant from power or undo the wrongs that have already occurred. But it tells people that there is something they can do. There is an organized opposition mounting periodic events in which they can participate. It is strong and growing stronger, with their help. They are not disconnected and disempowered; they can be part of something that has genuine force. Already, No Kings has caused a moribund Democratic leadership in Washington to stiffen their spines because of that pressure from below.
Public protest is not, in itself, the solution. But we can’t solve the problem without it. There’s a reason that in so many cases, tyrants have been driven from office not by a violent revolution but by mass protests that became too powerful to resist. The more people see their fellow citizens out protesting, the more they question whether the regime deserves their support.
Popular legitimacy matters in every system, and when a leader loses it — whether in a democracy, an autocracy, or whatever you might call what we’re experiencing now — they spiral downward.
The administration’s response was enormously clarifying
There were some immediate attempts to simply dismiss the No Kings protests; White House spokespeople asked by journalists about the event responded “Who cares?” But President Trump cares very, very much.
The Republican Party has increasingly come to define itself by what and whom it hates. If some new issue bursts into public awareness, they won’t know what they think until they find out what position Democrats were taking so they can take the opposite one. They’re anti-anti-racism, and anti-anti-climate change, and all it takes to get them to denounce something is to tell them liberals like it. They’ll even get worked up about a corporate logo if a bunch of bots tell them it’s woke, apparently because the Founding Fathers would never have stood for sans serif fonts.
So calling this event (and the larger movement it seeks to create) “No Kings” turns out to have been a stroke of genius, because Trump’s response was to essentially say Yeah, I’m the king — and because I’m the king, I can poop on people!
After so many years one would think he had lost the ability to shock, but no — generative AI slop tools give Trump a whole new way to act like a petulant toddler:
Yes, the president of the United States posted a video showing him wearing a crown and pooping on crowds of Americans. Whether you think this is evidence of rapidly advancing dementia or just a new expression of the same vulgar and juvenile impulses Trump has always had, there is no universe in which posting a video like that one is politically beneficial for him.
“The rule of kings is bad and just what America was created to reject” is a pretty fundamental American idea. But in the world of today’s Republican Party, if Donald Trump says kings are good and it’s good that he’s a king, everyone else in the party is required to agree. Starting with his vice president:
This puts every Republican in an awkward position. Few of them want to have an argument about whether America should have a king, and whether that king should be Donald Trump. But that is what No Kings successfully created.
After his weeks-long effort to smear patriotic protesters as extremists went poof, Speaker Johnson damned Trump with faint praise by crediting him for not closing the National Mall to demonstrators.
Trump, meanwhile, told so many lies about No Kings during a gaggle with reporters Sunday evening on Air Force One that it was hard not to wonder if he’s confusing AI videos with reality.
So in the end, it’s difficult to imagine how No Kings could have gone much better. Turnout was enormous. There was no violence. Trump’s response was bizarre and repugnant. Those who participated are more likely to keep fighting, and those who didn’t join this time know there is a place for them in the resistance.
This isn’t a guarantee of success in stopping or even slowing what Trump is doing. But every tyrant tries to convince the public that support for them is all but universal and opposition is both dangerous and futile. Trump will keep saying that. But it will be even harder to believe than it was before.
That’s it for today
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They tried to preempt the protest with caricature because they feared what it might actually reveal: not chaos, but coherence. Not violence, but vitality. No Kings didn’t just defy the narrative. It exposed the fear behind it.
Authoritarians rely on the illusion of consensus. They need the public to believe resistance is fringe, fractured, or futile. But when millions show up: joyful, angry, organized, unafraid; that illusion cracks.
No Kings didn’t end the threat. But it made the lie harder to sell. And that, in itself, is power.
Thank you!
—Johan
Thank you for writing this as the Republican Party. I for one would like to see "MAGA" go away in reporting. This implies the extreme wing and I think it's pretty clear that the entire party is complicit.