Nothing frightens a king more than his people \u2014 with good reason.<\/p>\n
A people\u2019s revolution<\/a> broke through the last bricks of the Berlin Wall. Street protests toppled communism<\/a> in Czechoslovakia. The people booted a king before America was a country.<\/p>\n On No Kings Day last Saturday, millions of protesting Americans<\/a> made clear they will not tolerate a new one.<\/p>\n All over the country, an estimated 5 to 7 million people enthusiastically stood up to Donald Trump. For a president who obsesses over crowd sizes, he had to be afraid.<\/p>\n We heard it in the hysterical talking points from House Speaker Mike Johnson and other Trump proxies, how the protesters hate America<\/a>. They are terrorists, anarchists and Marxists, possibly dangerous, and definitely paid by nefarious Jewish globalists like George Soros.<\/p>\n Others expressed confusion; Trump couldn\u2019t be a king because he was democratically elected.<\/p>\n Demolishing democracy<\/p>\n No Kings is not about the 2024 election. It\u2019s what Trump has done after the election, because so much of it is shredding the Constitution he took an oath to protect. His contempt for it undergirds everything from lawless immigration raids to freeing George Santos.<\/p>\n Trump is far too insulated by his sycophants to realize that this movement is not simply an extension of frustration from his first term.<\/p>\n A strong statement by 7 million patriotic Americans is a good start, but 70 million would be better.<\/p>\n People may be angered over his policies, but the demolition of democracy is what motivated millions to act. And he has not yet figured out that he no longer owns the libs with juvenile images like the AI-generated video he posted on social media, depicting him flying a jet over protesters and dropping feces on them, all while wearing a crown.<\/p>\n The libs were not outraged. They were with independents and some Republicans, exercising their right to peaceful assembly. They competed for the best signs. They wore inflatable costumes and poked fun<\/a> at the pompous. They carried a massive copy<\/a> of the Constitution along Pennsylvania Avenue.<\/p>\n They flexed their political muscle. They are getting stronger.<\/p>\n Peaceful and professional<\/p>\n According to the Harvard\/University of Pennsylvania Crowd Counting Consortium, April\u2019s Hands Off protests drew<\/a> between 919,000 and 1.5 million people.<\/p>\n June\u2019s No Kings Day protests<\/a> drew between 2 and 4.8 million people. Saturday may have drawn between 5 and 7 million, though reliable estimates could take weeks.<\/p>\n That\u2019s partly because there were so many people in so many places. The 2,500 protest locations were spread across America, from midtown Manhattan to rural Iowa<\/a> to Homer, Alaska.<\/p>\n Protests aren\u2019t just growing. The number of protests is accelerating. Since Jan. 22, there have been more than twice as many<\/a> street protests than after Trump\u2019s first inauguration eight years ago, the Consortium found.<\/p>\n Trump derided the No Kings turnout as \u201cvery small, very ineffective<\/a>\u201d and called protesters \u201cwhacked out.\u201d He ignores them at his political peril.<\/p>\n The Tea Party\u2019s protests and raucous town halls were scorned<\/a> by incumbent Democrats and even some Republicans in 2009. Late night comedians laughed at their colonial America costumes. A year later, Tea Party candidates scored victories across the country. Barack Obama\u2019s 47% approval rating was too weak to fend off the surge.<\/p>\n Broken promises<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s approval is even weaker, an average 43% before the recent government shutdown.<\/p>\n The president\u2019s poor polling may not stem from his reckless authoritarian choices. It might reflect his failure to make good on campaign promises: Immediately ending the war in Ukraine, slashing grocery costs, protecting Medicaid.<\/p>\n There\u2019s another campaign promise he hasn\u2019t kept: Trump said he sought to be a dictator just on \u201cDay One\u201d and no more.<\/p>\n Trump wasn\u2019t a dictator on Inauguration Day, and despite his embrace of Project 2025\u2019s authoritarian playbook, he\u2019s not a dictator now \u2014 not yet anyway.<\/p>\n If he hadn\u2019t jetted off to the political cocoon of Mar-a-Lago on No Kings Day, he could have looked out the White House window and seen that the American people intend to keep it that way.<\/p>\n The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman, and Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nothing frightens a king more than his people \u2014 with good reason. 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