Multiple Republican lawmakers on Friday lobbed smears against the upcoming “No Kings” rallies scheduled to take place on October 18 across the US.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) described the “No Kings” events as “a hate-America rally,” which he said would include “the Antifa crowd, the pro-Hamas crowd, and the Marxists.”
“They’re all going to gather on the [Washington] Mall,” Johnson continued. “We’ve got some House Democrats selling t-shirts for this event. It is an outrageous gathering for outrageous purposes.”
Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN) echoed Johnson and linked the “No Kings” marches to the continued federal government shutdown, claiming Democrats were refusing to vote to fund the government “to score political points with the terrorist wing of their party, which is set to hold... a hate-America rally in DC next week.”
Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS), during an interview on Newsmax, described the October 18 protests as “a Soros paid-for protest” filled with “professional protesters” and “agitators,” and threatened those who attend with a deployment of armed forces like the ones President Donald Trump has imposed on cities including Chicago and Memphis.
“We’ll have to get the National Guard out,” he said. “Hopefully it will be peaceful. I doubt it.”
Joe Walsh, a former Republican congressman from Illinois who broke with the party over its refusal to hold Trump accountable, expressed disgust with linking the “No Kings” marches to terrorists.
“Looks like everyone in my former political party has signed on to the Donald Trump/Stephen Miller game plan, which means calling Democrats ‘terrorists,’” he wrote in a post on X. “Terrorists? Despicable! Shameful!”
The October 18 “No Kings” rallies are a sequel to nationwide demonstrations that took place this past June and drew an estimated 5 million people across over 2,100 cities and towns.
Contrary to the Republican lawmakers’ claims, these protests were overwhelmingly peaceful demonstrations against what organizers described as “the gross abuse of power that we’ve seen consistently from the Trump administration.”
Ezra Levin, cofounder of progressive organization Indivisible, one of the groups behind the “No Kings” marches, vowed on Thursday that the upcoming events will be “the largest peaceful protest in modern American history.”
Levin also remained defiant in the face of baseless claims that his organization funds violent rioting.
“Trump and Miller can lie, smear, and threaten all they want,” he said. “They will lose.”