One day after President Donald Trump jeered Women's March demonstrators on Twitter _ writing, "Why didn't these people vote?" _ his top spokesman said Monday that Trump also thinks many of those at the rallies around the world were not protesting him.
Trump is "cognizant to the fact that a lot of these people were there to protest an issue of concern to them and not against anything," White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters, citing the generally positive mood of the marchers who flooded the National Mall.
With that answer, Spicer sought to brush aside that Trump was undeniably the impetus for the marches _ the idea for them came about the day after his election _ and focus instead on the fact that they grew into a broader demonstration encompassing many issues.
But interviews with organizers and participants showed that Trump's election was the overwhelming reason millions of protesters flooded Washington, D.C., and other cities Saturday.
"The rhetoric of the past election cycle has insulted, demonized and threatened many of us ... and our communities are hurting and scared," reads the first sentence of the march's mission statement, though Trump is not mentioned in its platform. "We are confronted with the question of how to move forward in the face of national and international concern and fear."
The idea for the marches came when a retired attorney in Hawaii, Teresa Shook, demoralized by Trump's win, created a Facebook event calling for a rally in Washington.
The event took off and became a global phenomenon, with more than 1 million people signing up to march and more estimated to have joined in Saturday. "It's like the women of the world were sitting on a powder keg and Donald Trump lit the match," one of the group's organizers said in a statement.
The mood at many marches was upbeat and sometimes almost celebratory, with protesters championing a range of left-leaning causes. But protesters' signs were also dominated by anti-Trump messages such as "Get your tiny hands off my uterus," and "You can't comb over misogyny."
Shook embraced the upbeat mood and the broad message during the march, but was focused on Trump's re-election bid in 2020.
"A negative has been turned into a positive," Shook said in an interview at the march in Washington. "All these people coming together to unite to try and make a difference. That's what we're going to be doing for the next four years."
