Trump has kicked a sleeping giant — and now it's furious

On Saturday, 7 to 8 million of us took to the streets to demonstrate against Trump.

That’s not all.

Every major media outlet — including Fox News — has refused to sign Pete Hegseth’s unconstitutional demand that they report only what the Defense Department wants them to report or lose their press credentials. They’ve all turned in their press credentials, which means no one is turning up for Hegseth’s press briefings.

What’s the sound of a press briefing without the press?

Seven of the nine universities Trump “invited” to join his university compact — in which they give up academic freedom for a priority place in government funding — have said, essentially, f--- no.

Disney was forced into reinstating Jimmy Kimmel after consumers threatened to boycott a wide range of Disney products. According to Strength in Numbers, the Disney boycott quickly became four times as large as any boycott over the last five years.

The great sleeping giant of America is awakening.

I’m old enough to have witnessed the sleeping giant awaken several times before.

Joe McCarthy’s communist witch hunt destroyed countless careers before the giant roared: “Have you no sense of decency?”

McCarthy melted almost as quickly as the Wicked Witch of the West. His national popularity evaporated. Three years later, censored by his Senate colleagues, ostracized by his party, and ignored by the press, McCarthy drank himself to death, a broken man at the age of 48.

The giant roared again a decade later, after television showed civil rights marchers getting clobbered by white supremacists. Congress passed the Civil Rights Act.

It roared again after tens of thousands of young Americans were killed in the jungles of Vietnam, finally bringing to an end one of the nation’s costliest, deadliest, and stupidest wars.

It roared again at Richard Nixon after Nixon was heard on tape plotting the cover-up of Watergate — then was forced to exit the White House by helicopter on his way back to California.

It is starting to roar now — at the sociopathic occupant of the Oval Office who won’t tolerate criticism, who has revealed his utter contempt for the freedom of Americans to criticize him, to write or speak negatively about him, even to joke about him.

I’ve seen a lot. I know the signs. The sleeping giant always remains asleep until some venality becomes so noxious, some action so disrespectful of the common good, some brutality so noisy, that he has no choice but to awaken.

And when he does, the good sense of the American people causes him to put an end to whatever it was that awakened him.

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• Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.
• Robert Reich's new memoir,Coming Up Short, can be found wherever you buy books. You can also support local bookstores nationally by ordering the book at bookshop.org.