Republicans are very uneasy about the size and scope of the “No Kings” rallies. Speakers and editorials have attempted to present it as a rebellion with violent underpinnings. A couple of examples of protestors making violent gestures, one regarding Charlie Kirk, were presented as evidence. We should all mourn the death of Kirk while at the same time doing everything in our power to keep the ideas he promoted from growing in our society. That is, in part, what the “No Kings” rallies were all about.
Our aspiring king is promoting Kirks ideas and acting on many of them. Kirk was very much an extrem conservative hiding in plain sight. He called the Civil Rights Act of 1964 a “mistake” and Martin Luther King Jr. an “awful” person. He thought everyone should have a gun to protect themselves from a “tyrannical government” and that climate change was “complete gibberish”. It’s not unusual to hear Trump mimic some of those ideas and many more.
Trump supporters will tell you he’s following through on his promises and has the electoral mandate to do it. That mandate assertion is pretty farfetched. In both percentage and raw votes, Trump’s winning margin is less than half of Biden’s just four years earlier. A 1.5% victory does not a mandate make. That’s even more clear when you realize he won less than half of all votes cast, 49.7%. Most Americans voted for someone else or did not vote at all.
While he is following through on some of his promises he never intended to lower prices as he claimed. It was always his intention to Levey tariffs on many countries and deport undocumented low wage workers. Both of those actions will cause prices to rise as we are experiencing. Even more than just the effects of his policies, we have to protest the manner in which he is carrying them out. It seems he decides in the middle of the night he’s going to persue some new policy, posts a screed on Truth Social and then tries to make it happen. There appears to be no one who would encourage him to think it over.
It’s absolutely true he put loyalty to himself over expertise in the field when he selected members of his administration and staff. It’s easy to justify the position that we have the least experienced or qualified government in anyone’s lifetime and it shows. He doesn’t have to bother with justifying his actions to anyone in his administration or to a Congress dominated by followers who fear him. None of us has ever seen a sight like one of his cabinet meetings. Watching each member heap praise on him in ways a king might expect is really disturbing.
The list of disturbing actions is endless. I don’t believe the rally’s affect Trump directly. He’s just to self-absorbed for that. It does seem that some of the politicians he depends on are starting to wonder how his rampaging over our democracy will affect them in the next election. We need to show them they have very real reason for concern.