Click on link underline to watch the video. No time to watch all the coverage of the ‘No Kings’ rallies? Zeteo teams have you covered on the ground in Chicago and DC.
Millions of Americans attended thousands of “No
Kings” events across the United States on Saturday to protest Donald Trump’s
increasingly authoritarian presidency. It was one of the largest single-day
protests in US history and came amid Trump’s brutal immigration raids and
efforts to militarily occupy cities such as Chicago, Washington, DC, and Los
Angeles.
Republicans may have inadvertently juiced turnout by constantly complaining and hysterically lying about the anti-Trump protests in recent days. House Speaker Mike Johnson kept calling the events the “Hate America rally.” Trump Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the No Kings events were “part of antifa,” the disparate anti-fascist movement that Trump wants to eliminate. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the events would feature the “the farthest left” and “the most unhinged in the Democratic Party.”
Conservative Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley claimed, with zero basis, that the No
Kings rallies would be violent and that its funders should thus be investigated
and prosecuted. Senior sources within the Trump administration told Zeteo that
federal agencies would be monitoring the No Kings protests throughout the
country, including the Hands Off Chicago marches, for any signs of what they
called “domestic terrorism” or violent “extremism” that they could use as part
of their efforts to clamp down on liberal non-profits and
donors.
As you can see in the video above, at the huge
Chicago rally that Zeteo’s Asawin Suebsaeng covered, there was no
sign of any vast parade of antifa radicals or “terrorist” sympathizers that
Republicans claimed would materialize this weekend. The multiple Chicago-area
events instead represented the exact type of demonstration of
solidarity and outrage that Team Trump wants Americans to believe isn’t
possible: massive crowds of diverse and peaceful protesters nonviolently
opposing Trump, standing against his federal shows of force against US cities.
An estimated 200,000 people turned out for the No Kings event in DC
– where Zeteo’s editor-in-chief, Mehdi Hasan, spoke to the crowd. The event was safe and orderly, and
felt like a parade or rally rather than a disruption. Protesters who spoke
with Zeteo’s Prem Thakker expressed anger about Trump’s masked
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) thugs kidnapping immigrants and
citizens alike. Attendees were also concerned about Trump’s attacks on free
speech as well as Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Watch the video below:
Progressive Senator Bernie Sanders spoke at the DC event and warned that Trump is putting US democracy in danger with his attacks on immigrants, free speech, and the media. He spoke out against Trump’s efforts to consolidate “more and more power in his own hands and in the hands of his fellow oligarchs.”
Wannabe King?
The first round of No Kings protests took place in
June, when Trump hosted his military birthday parade in DC. An estimated five
million people attended those No Kings events, in what was one of the
largest days of protest in US history. Organizers expected a similar number of
people or even more would turn out this weekend. Indivisible, a group involved
in the planning, announced that nearly seven million people attended
the No Kings events on Saturday, calling it “the biggest single-day protest
against tyranny in American history.”
The point of the No Kings protests, according to its organizers, is to show that “America has no kings, and the power belongs to the people.” The name wasn’t plucked from thin air: Trump’s White House previously described the president as “the king” on social media. (Trump also recently claimed that “a lot” of Americans would “like a dictator.
In the lead-up to the No Kings rallies, Trump
tried to downplay the idea he sees himself as a king. “They’re referring to me
as a king. I’m not a king,” he said in a Fox News interview clip released on Friday.
During the No Kings rallies on Saturday, however,
Trump’s political team repeatedly posted images on X showing the president wearing a crown, and also posted
an AI-generated video with Trump dressed in a monarch’s robes while
standing at the White House.
Vice President J.D. Vance and Trump’s “crypto
czar” David Sacks both shared an AI video showing Trump putting on a crown and robes
and wielding a sword, and Democratic lawmakers bowing to him. Around 9:30 p.m.
ET, Trump shared the video on Truth Social. It seems he is now
openly fantasizing about being a king.
Team Trump may want Trump to be a king. The
president may think his supporters want him to be a dictator. On Saturday,
millions of Americans stood together to say: No Kings.
As Prem noted at the DC rally, if the sprawling
crowd was filled with Marxists and antifa, as Speaker Johnson claimed, that
means “the Republican Party is in a bit of hot water.”
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