Republican voices were mostly silent as No Kings rallies and marches against Trump administration policies unfurled on Saturday, many in the spirit of a street party that countered the “hate America” depiction advanced by senior members of the party.
Instead of provocation, there were marching bands, huge banners with “we the people” references to the US constitution, and protesters wearing inflatable costumes, particularly frogs, which have emerged as a sign of resistance.
It was the third mass mobilization since Trump’s return to the White House and came against the backdrop of a government shutdown that not only has closed federal programs and services but is testing the core balance of power, as an aggressive executive confronts Congress and the courts in ways that protest organizers warn are a slide toward authoritarianism.
In comments Friday, Donald Trump opposed the protest organizers’ characterization of him as a would-be monarch.
“They say they’re referring to me as a king. I’m not a king,” Trump said in a Fox News interview.
Later Friday, a Trump campaign social media account mocked the protests by posting a computer-generated video of the president clothed like a monarch, wearing a crown and waving from a balcony.
At a White House event on Wednesday, Trump tried to downplay the No Kings events. “I hear very few people [are] going to be there, by the way, but they have their day coming up and they want to have their day in the sun,” he said. Trump is spending the weekend at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida.
In a counter-programming move, JD Vance and defense secretary Pete Hegseth were attending a live-fire amphibious capabilities demonstration at Camp Pendleton in California to commemorate the US Marine Corps’ 250th birthday.
However, a plan to fire live artillery shells over a nearby highway drew objections from governor Gavin Newsom, who said it forced the California highway patrol to close a portion of a major interstate through southern California for safety reasons.
“The President is putting his ego over responsibility with this disregard for public safety,” the Democratic governor said in a statement. “Firing live rounds over a busy highway isn’t just wrong – it’s dangerous.”
Vance posted a comment on X alluding to a meeting between New York’s Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani and Siraj Wahhaj, imam of at-Taqwa, who appeared on a list of un-indicted co-conspirators in the trial of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York.
“I’ve been reliably informed that Democrats are opposed to any kind of political violence, so I look forward to them universally condemning Zohran Mamdani for campaigning with an unindicted co-conspirator in a terrorist plot that killed 6 New Yorkers,” Vance wrote.
Fox News, meanwhile, ran a report claiming that organizers embedded in the global intifada to destroy the state of Israel had moved to join the No Kings protests in New York under the organizational groupings of “UAW Labor for Palestine” and “NYC Labor for Palestine”.
The right-leaning outlet also reported on Friday that foundations connected to George Soros were funding the No Kings protests via a $3m grant to the organizer Indivisible “to support the grantee’s social welfare activities”.
The relative silence of Republican leaders on Saturday came in contrast with efforts last week to preview the second No Kings day as a “hate America” day populated by Hamas sympathizers and a reason why Democrats were delaying an agreement to end the government shutdown, now on its 18th day.
Republican leaders disparaged rally-goers as “communists” and “Marxists”, and claimed that centrist Democrats, including the senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, who marched in New York, were being held political hostage by the far left.
“I encourage you to watch – we call it the ‘hate America’ rally – that will happen Saturday,” said the House speaker, Mike Johnson of Louisiana.
“Let’s see who shows up for that,” Johnson added, listing groups including “antifa types”, people who “hate capitalism” and “Marxists in full display”.
