6d ago

Republicans mostly silent as millions of Americans protest Trump on No Kings day

www.theguardian.com

Outside of typical remarks from Donald Trump, JD Vance and Mike Johnson and a Fox News report, party stayed mum

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.

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5d ago

Republicans mostly silent as millions of Americans protest Trump on No Kings day

www.theguardian.com /us-news/2025/oct/18/no-kings-protest-rally-republicans

160 comments

Then nobody better tell me that protests don’t accomplish anything. Besides all the things you aren’t admitting they accomplish, getting republicans to shut up for a day is a damn miracle in itself.
- It was supposed to be this dark, violent uprising of slavering feral ANTIFA Commies, and instead, it was a just a huge national street party/ MAGA Roast that MAGAs weren't invited to.
  Now they have to explain to their cult how wrong they were about the left being violent and hating America, without looking like their feeling are hurt for not being included in the fun.
  
  The right wing media is just waiting for the handful of police reports to come in from the weekend to fixate upon, and talk about non stop, so they can make that "violent uprising" a reality for their viewers.
  
  the whol anti anti facist thing is a pretty daring stance for trump and johnson. So funny they act like they are the real americans.
- They may actually be scared to mention it at this point.
No shit about staying silent. Even the media is silent. The only references I can find in my news feed regarding the No Kings rallies, is local reports from small local stations. Things like this make it obvious which side the mass media is on.
- Red state navy town here. There were tons of former Republicans at my local protest.
- I think AP covered it.
  
  NPR too!!
- I am guessing Monday will have more dedicated articles coming out from larger orgs. It is usually the way of these weekend events.
- You all left social media. What the fuck did you all expect?
  It's so funny you have one of the largest protests in history but it's like you all are starting to realize you forgot a key part of any of this.
Mostly silent?! Except for the video King Trunp posted of him literally shitting on Americans. Presidential enough for you??
- I had to find it for myself because I couldn't believe what you wrote. But its true! He's not even hiding how much he hates Americans anymore.
  
  God, I can't believe you went even exagurating: https://youtu.be/ugrn6DNAYEU
  
  I guess it was meant to be a bomb but they didn't dare add that much violence to their propaganda, yet.
I went to one and it had pretty good turnout for a town in the middle of nowhere in Maine
- Two small towns in Ohio also had a surprising turnout considering they're both pretty damn red.
- Dude, it's insane. I live in the middle of nowhere. Hundreds of people showed up.
It's almost like "peaceful protest" is something that fascists can simply ignore.
- It's almost like peaceful protest is a building block, not a final outcome.
- You don’t understand how dictatorship works. Something as small as a busted escalator can bring down regime. You can’t afford to look foolish.
  
  Trump has looked foolish for literally the entire time and nothing has changed. Maybe you don't understand how dictatorship works.
  
  Yea, he really got SLAMMED by the escalator fiasco. Or literally anything else in the last [his entire life].
  What rock you livin’ under?
- Fascism on a national scale requires the consent or fear of the people in order to maintain power. They have to look strong. Anything that disturbs their voting bloc or contradicts the official narrative, especially on a broad stage, is going to cause them exponential problems because it looks like weakness. That's part of why fascism is inherently weak. Being able to ignore dissent is a luxury afforded only to the truly strong.
  The fact that they aren't saying anything in this case means that they've calculated that the erosion of their base is preferable to letting the news cycle keep running with this.
  
  My teenage pot head kid wrote this.
- Protesting is peaceful, but honestly, it's a show of potential capacity for violence. I went to the protest, but I went with eye protection, respirator, and ear protection. I wouldn't put it past trump to order the military to deploy LRADs against protestors. Also brought medical supplies, multi-tool and a sign.
  Also, for comparison, the largest right-wing protest I could find in the US was a mere ~650,000 people. We just put over 10x that amount on the streets in a single day.
- The Woman's March, BLM, Occupy Wallstreet, and the first No Kings were all successfully ignored. Millions of Americans marching is clearly not enough for us to be heard.
  
  7 million people is roughly 2% of the population. It's 10% of the people in this country that couldn't be bothered to vote. There's also no threat or demands to accompany this protest. Like what are the people in power supposed to think. An easily ignorable voting block is slightly agitated enough to spend a few hours holding a sign? Are they going to stop working or consuming? Are they going to gather votes and banish the two parties that have failed us? No lmao they're just gonna get together once every couple of months, there's absolutely no pressure to a public gathering.
Ours coincided with our Pride, they actually marched with us in the parade up to the capitol and then joined us. It was incredible, unlike anything I've seen in this city. Do I think Trump is going to magically be unseated? No. But let's make a habit of this, since I am not sure voting will actually happen in 28, and we need mob size forces to be easily called up.
- A lot of these protests, especially in bigger cities, have all kinds of booths at them too. The one near me had like 6 for just one congressional candidate, one for a mayoral candidate, and multiple for revolutionary socialists/communists, along with people walking all over the rally handing out fliers about a general strike.
  Tons of people sign up for these things, or even if they don't sign up to strike/canvass, end up changing their voting habits accordingly. A lot of local stuff can be really impactful, since a lot of the policies most directly felt by people are local policies (e.g. is the pothole in front of your house fixed? Is your rent expensive? Is there visible poverty on the streets? Are the buses slow?) rather than federal ones (e.g. "we cut billions in research grants but you'll only really start noticing the overall effects yourself many years from now")
  I do wish we could just get all the people going to things like this to head over to ICE facilities and block 'em day and night, but it's a good consolation that they're taking some other actions regardless.
  
  Glad to hear your protests had some local political activism attached! Great place to platform and remind people that qualified candidates are everywhere!
First of all, stop calling them Republicans. The Republican party is dead, replaced by the MAGA Party.
The Republican foundation of Smaller Government, Lower Taxes, Responsible Economic/Fiscal Policy, Family Values, etc. has been replaced by the MAGA foundation of Treason, Corruption, Racism, White Supremacy, Rape, Pedophilia, Violence, Cowardice, Ignorance, Incompetence, and Intolerance.
The Democrats get crazy when a MAGA calls them the "Democrat Party," so hit them back, and make it official that the Democratic Party no longer recognizes the Republican Party, and will never refer to it again in speeches, interviews, campaign literature, etc. As far as the Democratic Party is concerned, it is now the MAGA Party.
Then stick by it, and watch them melt down. They LOVE being Republicans, they are proud of it, after building it up in the Conservative Propaganda Machine for decades as an honorable institution. Many of them have to be uncomfortable with being sidelined by MAGA, and getting lip service from them. They already know that the Republican Party is dead, but they are afraid to say it out loud.
So the Dems should do it, and give them their worst nightmare - they allowed the MAGAs to destroy the "Party of Lincoln."
- While I love the idea, they'd probably just come back and always refer to the dems as the Woke Socialist Party.
  it really only works if the media also gets onboard, and i doubt they'd get onboard with either of those.
  
  The old "I know you are, but what am I" Defense? That's lame and pathetic, and everybody knows it.
  And they don't need the media to be on board. The media weren't on board with calling it the Democrat Party, but they don't do anything about it if a MAGA calls it that on their airwaves, either.
  Dems just need to consistently call them MAGA, and NEVER use the word Republican.
They're silent because they know all the protestors will go back to work tomorrow. If you want to force them to acknowledge it you need to show up the next day as well.
- This 💯. No kings was a protest, it is not a movement and is not trying to be a movement.
- I actually agree. The shit going down in the USA certainly deserves a General Strike.
  And that's why unions were invented, to put that option on the table. How many % of workers are unionized in the US? Is there historical precedence of a general strike without unions?
- If these parades are ever to work, they need to stop being predictable. Stop giving the enemy info about them like how long they'll last of where they're being held. Find ways to spread the word without them finding out and make it a continuous thing that has no end in sight until demands are met. Make sure you showcase you will escalate if they feel they can safely ignore you.
  When the enemy goes low, you kick them in the face as hard as you can.
- The tricky part about a general strike is that you dont have much room for do-overs if it turns out you don't have the numbers you need. Protests are largely symbolic, but are also a good way for organizers to gauge how willing/able folks are to engage in more drastic action.
  If a general strike is what you think the movement should go towards, I recommend your next steps be strengthening community support systems - food banks, free clinics, shelters, etc - since these things will be needed to support a general strike (folks will choose feeding their children over political action, so make sure they can accomplish both). In the mean time, it also helps out folks who have been hit the hardest by republican and trump cuts to services.
  I highly recommend folks read up on some of ICNC's stuff, since they focus on the practical side of nonviolent conflict.
To be honest, we shouldn't even need Republicans to turn the tide. We just need to get people off their asses and stop pushing both sides bullshit.
Democratic primaries will be fast approaching and now is the best time ever to support Democratic candidates like AOC (likely to primary Schumer), Mamdani, Talarico, Chakrabarti, etc. and get out the AIPAC crap.
It's part of the propaganda strategy to pick their battles. They never speak on your terms. They only speak when they have the upper hand. Keep in mind in general they never directly acknowledge any of your talking points. Not unless they have an avenue to interject logical fallacies and pivot the dialog to their terms.
The moment they start talking about this they lend credence to your side. It carves open space in public discourse. This is the exact same tactic they use against you. And people fall for it every time. You're never supposed to lend credence to their trolling. You're not supposed to feed the trolls. Yet here we are. A decade into this era of internet troll right wing politics. People started feeding the trolls and cannot help themselves.
- I go into republican forums and post stuff I read on Lemmy to troll the shit out of them.
Can't believe how many people haven't even heard of it when it's one of the biggest protests in US history. Those left-leaning news channels sure doing their job by covering it for 5 minutes I guess. None of my friends nor 3 other people I talked to today even knew what the protest was or that it was happening until I told them about it.
- A lot of media outlets worldwide are ignoring these protests or covering them very briefly when nobody's watching. Most likely due to influence from the US.
  
  MeidasTouch baby!
  
  Most likely because the world has given up on the USA and is moving on. Your problems are well-deserved, they figure.
- Most people live their lives wholly unaware of reality. If their entertainment programming doesn’t consist of anything informational, they will never know about events except second hand from others, like your case. The silent majority doesn’t vote in elections, not because they don’t see the point, it’s because they likely had know idea there were elections.
  I had to explain to my friends what “mid-terms” were. They vote in presidential elections..
  
  Uninformed and disinterested people are a very useful demographic to those in power. It’s also notable that even when they encounter information regarding important events, they won’t be aware of what actions they can take in response to it. Not being informed on important events and their progression also impacts how they perceive those who are taking action to change or influence those events. This can easily lead to the perception of justified responses being excessive or alarmist.
- All media are complicit. Don't just look at one side. Both sides are causing division where there isn't any. Hate for dollars is quite a lucrative trade in this fucked up world.
- Always has been...
  Gil Scott-Heron - Revolution Will Not Be Televised
- And this is the threat posed by consolidating communication and media. Even if we want to organize a movement, we can't communicate with each other to organize it or share it.
- And it's such an obviously organic and grass roots movement too.
I was at a rally all day today. I saw two noteworthy attempts to counter protest the HUNDREDS of "no king" protesters that showed up in my city.
One was a guy who wrote couchfucker propaganda on his car in chalk paint. "JD Vance 2028" or something like that. He flipped us off at 50mph. Few saw it.
The second was a guy that brought his Charlie Kirk flag to the last 25 minutes of the protest, after 2/3rds of the no kings folks went home.
So, one was a coward that drove by one time. One time. I think he yelled something, but since Trump supporters don't believe in science, he didn't realize we can't hear shit when he's speeding by at 50 in a 35.
The second guy... Man, what do you even say? How about 'what the fuck even is a Charlie Kirk flag?' These people are mentally fucking ill. They will villainize and glorify anyone and anything. If Trump told them douchebags were a hallowed object tomorrow, they'd be lovingly calling themselves 'douchies' by next week.
- Point and laugh. Those types of people hate being the joke (that they are)
  
  If they didn't want to be the butt of a joke they would never try to park their pickup trucks in public.
- If Trump told them douchebags were a hallowed object tomorrow, they’d be lovingly calling themselves ‘douchies’ by next week.
  The thing with the golden diapers came pretty close.
  
  I don't even wanna know. 🤦🏼‍♂️
- Douchie McDouchefaces for long
- a guy that brought his Charlie Kirk flag
  ‘what the fuck even is a Charlie Kirk flag?’
  Well...can you tell us? You're the one who saw it, lol.
Republicans mostly silent
good, it was time they shut the fuck up for once
They know they are guilty.
Had an asshole roll coal on us while they drove by
- Still unbelievable to me that that's even a thing.
- N IL?
  
  Was at a few events in North of Chicago and did see some coal rolling.
- car brain <---> fascism
There were a couple republicans on harleys driving past repeatedly that I made fun of and called pussies.
- We had a guy with a big truck driving up and down blasting “Proud to be an American” from a large speaker in the bed of his truck. It was awesome when all the protesters cheered to hearing the song and applauded the guy.
  Pretty sure that wasn’t the reaction he expected.
Are there many Republicans in the USA? I thought they won elections because they won the areas where votes are more valuable i.e. those places with very low population density. Same with American governance in general, like how California (pop. 39 MM & 732,189 people per electoral vote) has the same amount of Senators in Congress as Wyoming (pop. 587,000 & 192,284 people per electoral vote).
Would you say 1 out of 4 American adults are Republicans? 1 out of 3?
- Tough to estimate. There are definitely fewer Republicans than the GOP would like you to believe; probably far below 50%. Many more people in the US are independent and will vote for a person over a party, or at least were. Republicans win due to a combination of the Electoral College (as you noted), coordinated misinformation campaigns (including by hostile nations), voter suppression, gerrymandering, low turnout, and the fact that older people both (1) skew conservative and (2) are more likely to be politically engaged than younger people.
  So, actual Republicans? Yes, almost certainly closer to 25%. Probably fewer. People who say they're independent but functionally vote conservative in every election due to the aforementioned misinformation campaigns? Maybe another 10-15% at most. Remember, "did not vote" has run the board in every election for the past 40+ years, winning practically every state by a landslide.
  But this article isn't about the rank-and-file Republican citizens. It's about the grifters in elected office.
  
  But this article isn’t about the rank-and-file Republican citizens. It’s about the grifters in elected office.
  Haha yes, it just got me thinking, that's all. Excellent points, thank you.
- 340 million Americans and 80 million ish voted for trump. That’s barely 25% so yes 1:4 consent, 1:4 apathetic, 1:4 against, and 1:4 kids immigrants etc
- According to Pew research 49% lean democrat and 48% lean republican. From 2024
  https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/04/09/the-partisanship-and-ideology-of-american-voters/
  
  Thanks for the link. That's an interesting way of measuring it.
  About two-thirds of registered voters identify as a partisan, and they are roughly evenly split between those who say they are Republicans (32% of voters) and those who say they are Democrats (33%). Roughly a third instead say they are independents or something else (35%), with most of these voters leaning toward one of the parties.
  Of course we can't know about adults who are not registered voters, but I would suspect they lean Democrat. I don't really buy the 50/50 split though because that would be a blowout for Republicans in terms of electoral votes due to FPTP voting. There are also other forms of corruption like gerrymandering that allow Republicans to win elections with a minority of votes.
Apparently 5m people. Which is great, but we need 12.5m to make change, so the country needs to get like 700% worse
- There's not going to be a magic number of protestors that defeats fascism
  
  Wish I could upvote twice, people keep thinking the number is magic
  
  Pretty sure 100% ist a magic number
  
  3.5% is a well established number. You can choose to argue over it, but please do it with someone else.
- I’m gonna bet it goes up. It did the last several times I saw early estimates for these events.
  
  This IS an estimate you already read. Dude's likely using Gemeni or ChatGPT for this data. Don't trust it.
- Bullshit 5m people. Who told you that, an LLM? 5m was the prediction last time, and it was waaaay, way, off.
  
  The news told me. Then they got updated numbers. Chill out. Talk your meds.
- If you’re not willing to show up armed, massively disrupt, or even create mild inconvenience it doesn’t matter how many people are in your cute little self-congratulatory parade.
  
  Fuck you, fascist. Trump wants this right now. If you want it, then you're with him.
  
  But but we have posters and inflatable frog suits!!!
ok so some of them actually read poverbs.
Soooooo
No kings day came and went and literally nothing changed?
What a surprise
For this about to furiously type about how big this event was: it's completely and utterly irrelevant if it doesn't change anything
Look at Europe: we protest and paralize the country until the right thing is done
Just showing a sign somewhere for a day with your fellow Americans will do nothing
- You miss understand then. It shows that despite what the trump administration says most of us hate him. It shows us our true numbers and builds confidence for the nexts steps. Hopefully.
  Btw your comment is completely irrelevant because it doesn’t change anything lol. The news itself is irrelevant because it doesn’t change anything… see how that works.
This one, just like the last one, was an opportunity for cowardly liberals to assuage their guilt about not actually doing anything. The very definition of virtue signaling.
Congratulations, you’ve further emboldened fascists by confirming to them they have nothing to fear from you beyond a snarky poster and some noise on a Saturday every few months.
You’re too craven to throw a punch or break something? Fine. Do you know how easy it would be to move one of these “marches” onto a major highway? To block traffic at a major airport? But no… “that would just be SO disruptive,” and people might be MAD at you. Clowns.
- You need to let go of the hate, it makes your life miserable. There is nothing for you at the bottom of this, just paranoia and destruction. Go meet some real people in reality, it helps.
  
  What do you think will change once this second protest is over?
- I'm with you. If this second, ahem, 'protest' was the week or so after the first one I'd actually be very impressed, and confident that things would change.
  The fact that they are 3 or 4 months apart shows that the Gestapo and the orange Shitler have less than zero to worry about.
  The next question is what month next year will the next 'protest' happen? I'm guessing it'll be in February at the earliest. Wow, the Gang Of Paedos must be shaking in their boots!!!
  
  You've lost the plot brother. Showing your fellow Americans that the people who hate this are not the minority makes people willing to fight. Your senators and your governors are seeing millions of people don't support this. The last protest was one of the biggest in US history. The previous protest may be part of the reason democratic senators are putting their foot down for the most recent spending bill. They know they have the backing of the American people to fight this. If things get worse, I know I have at least a couple million other people who are willing to fight with me.

160 comments