Click here for larger version. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
What did we learn yesterday? When the time comes (and it certainly could), will Americans take to the streets in numbers great enough to do a proper Mussolini on Trump?
Halfway to the tipping point?
Erica Chenoweth, a Harvard political scientist, says that nonviolent protests lead to change once 3.5 percent of the population join nonviolent protests.
It has been very hard to find a total for the number of people who participated in “No Kings” protests yesterday. Axios reports 5 million. Other news source just say “millions.” How many people were at Trump’s parade in Washington yesterday? The White House itself said that 250,000 “patriots” attended.
Alt National Park Service said on Facebook that there were 11 million people at No Kings protests. I am highly skeptical of that number; we don’t know how it was derived. I also don’t know how Axios arrived at the 5 million figure, but it’s probably conservative. We easily seem to be halfway to what it would take to drive Trump out of office.
We’re just getting started.
If Trump’s parade cost $45 million, and 250,000 were there to watch, then the parade cost $180 per person. I hope they had a miserable time.
Trump must be furious
I watched ABC’s evening news to see how they played yesterday’s events. ABC correctly led with the assassination in Minnesota and the manhunt for the killer. Next was Israel-Iran, and after that the No Kings protests and Trump’s parade. Trump no doubt wanted violence in Washington so that troops could crush it and make him look strong. He didn’t get it. Instead he got upstaged by other events, bigtime.
There were reports that Trump was savaged in social media because his parade was a $45 million flop. Fox News quoted someone in the White House, who said that the No Kings protests were “a complete and utter failure with minuscule attendance.” Outside the Fox bubble, it was very much the other way around.
Who is more angry?
I have not been able to turn up any reports of violence yesterday by those taking part in the No King’s protests. The violence was from the other side — the shootings in Minnesota; vehicles driven into crowds in San Francisco and Culpepper, Virginia; and shots fired in Salt Lake City. Something happened in Portland, Oregon, but as far as I can tell it didn’t amount to much. The photos I’ve seen from inside the No Kings protest don’t show angry people. It looks more like a party. But we’ve still got three long, hot summers of Trump to get through — 2026, 2027, and 2028.
Trump is weak
Increasingly Trump is exposed as an idiot surrounded by radical but feckless idiots. Their batting average of successes to backfires, walk-backs, and back-downs is hilarious.
They wanted leftist violence in Los Angeles but instead got up-close video of a U.S. senator wrestled onto the floor and handcuffed by Kristi Noem’s goons. Putin ignores Trump. Natanyahu ignores Trump. Instead of the instant peace Trump promised, there is escalating war. China outmaneuvers him. Europe outmaneuvers him. Economists say we should brace for price increases this summer. Oil prices are up 7 percent because of Israel and Iran. Trump has started chickening out on deportations after corporate America somehow managed to remind him how much corporations depend on immigrant labor. His glorious parade fizzled. Violence by his brownshirts only stokes, rather than intimidates, the resistance. “Trump is wrapping up 100 days of historic failure,” Dana Milbank writes in the Washington Post.
I can imagine a scenario in which Trump more or less gives up, in which his hotheads such as Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem quit and go home in a frustrated rage, and in which Trump just surfs out his term and concentrates on sucking up money rather than destroying the American democracy. But I also can imagine a scenario in which he doubles down and continues to deploy the the authoritarian playbook.
But, based on what happened yesterday, I think the American people understand that, working together, we are much stronger than Trump.
It was very heartening to see the protests were such a success. A friend of mine was in Chicago and said the protest was huge and very good natured. It was also good to see President Macron visit Greenland yesterday at the invitation of Greenland’s PM, in open defiance of Trump. By all accounts he got a very warm welcome from the locals, unlike Vance’s aborted visit.
Hi Chenda: The American media way underplayed Macron in Greenland. And for that matter they’re underplaying G7. There’s been a lot going on, though, obviously…