It’s important to stay focused. Yes, it’s an outrage for the president to post a phony AI video of himself wearing a crown, flying a fighter jet and bombing peaceful protesters with human waste.
It’s outrageous for the congressional Republicans to defend the video or pretend they don’t know Donald Trump posted it. It’s outrageous, moreover, for the press corps to bend over backwards to avoid describing in plain English what everyone can see for themselves.
I mean, “brown liquid”! Jesus God, c’mon.
But let’s keep our heads. We have just witnessed the biggest one-day demonstration in our country’s history. About 7 million Americans across 50 states, including in small towns in rural districts, protested against the crimes of the regime. Together, they sent a message: America does not and will never have a king. What was his response?
To act like a king.
“I think it’s a joke,” the president said of No Kings. “I looked at the people — they’re not representative of this country. And I looked at all the brand new signs… I guess it was paid for by [George] Soros and other radical left lunatics … It looks like it was. We’re checking it out.”
“The demonstrations were very small, very ineffective, and the people were whacked out,” he added. “When you look at those people, those [people] are not representative of the people of our country.”
He said that before the phony AI video.
No one can imagine a Democratic president suggesting he can s--- on Americans with impunity. That would be a weekslong scandal. Yet reporters tend to shrug when Trump does it, because they accept as true the argument that Republicans are the only legitimate Americans.
That alone is an occasion to rehash the old grievance against the press corps. Every liberal I know is sick of the double standard embedded in media coverage of the parties, such that the Republicans are free to say anything at all while the Democrats are always held accountable.
But let’s not lose sight of what has been accomplished.
On the one hand, Trump is confessing to the allegations of illegitimacy against him. Protesters said he is not a king. Then he said, in effect, Oh yeah? Watch me. That alone is worth celebrating, as it affects people who have doubts about Trump, but don’t yet trust the opposition. No Kings drew about 5 million people in June. This time, it added a couple million more. Next time, perhaps, a couple million more than that.
On the other hand, however, is something deeper and more powerful.
The president and his party want the American people to believe that the Republicans – and the Republicans alone – are the real arbiters of reality. Critics do not have the liberty to interpret facts independently. They do not have the right to express beliefs according to guaranteed liberties. Only Republicans have the true authority to define America.
With one voice, more than 7 million Americans said no.
Before the rally, the Republicans said protesters are “Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens, violent criminals.” They are the “most unhinged in the Democratic Party.” They are the “pro-Hamas wing, the antifa people.”
In reality, No Kings featured millions of mostly white, mostly middle-class citizens over the age of 50. For some, demands were specific. (“Abolish ICE,” for instance.) For most, the protest was a necessity reaffirmation of America’s most basic republican virtues, for instance, that the people are sovereign and the Constitution is law.
As my senator, Chris Murphy, said of Trump:
“The truth is that he is enacting a detailed step-by-step plan to try to destroy all of the things that protect our democracy: free speech, fair elections and independent press, the right to peacefully protest. But the truth is he has not won yet. The people still rule in this country.”
Until now, the president has been able to convince elites in the media, corporations, universities, law firms and even the Democratic Party that he was an unstoppable force, practically an act of God. And in effect, that’s what he became, after they surrendered without a fight. No one dared bloody the bully’s nose. So he became a de facto king.
Things look different now that his nose is bloodied. Those who oppose him are more emboldened. Those who caved are humiliated and discredited. But mostly, the facade has fallen to expose a weakness present all along. His power is determined by the willingness of his enemies to defeat themselves. Now that they refuse, he’s furious.
The common folk are supposed to roll over the way their betters did. Yet here they are, reaffirming America’s bedrock democratic principles, as if they were entitled to them. The worst part is they are from a class of Americans that has the least to lose and the most to gain by opposing him. Under the banner of the most benign political demand – No Kings – they pose the greatest threat. If they were Black or brown, or Muslim or trans, his smears against them might work. But as it is, Trump is making comfortably middle-class white people over the age of 50 feel like warriors in the rebellion against the crown.
To be sure, Trump will escalate. The first thing a bully does after getting bloodied is look around for victims he believes will not fight back. Indeed, after the rally, he said, “don't forget I can use the Insurrection Act. Fifty percent of the presidents almost have used that. And that's unquestioned power." There’s no telling how far he will go.
But the point has been made. Donald Trump is not invincible. He is not infallible. He is not inevitable. And in reacting to the momentum that’s building against him – with a turd post – he’s making the point himself more persuasively than 7 million Americans can. He’s deepening the obscenity of his illegitimate rule by becoming even more obscene.