The impending No Kings protests scheduled for this weekend have President Donald Trump “really, really worried,” argued journalist Greg Sargent on Tuesday, adding that Trump’s panic was made evident by what he described as a “coordinated” effort from Republicans to dismiss the demonstrators as “terrorists.”
The No Kings protests are scheduled for this Saturday, Oct. 18, and are a follow up to the previous No Kings protests that took place last summer, attended by an estimated four-to-six million people.
“It has become very clear that President Donald Trump is really, really worried about the No Kings protests that are scheduled for October 18,” Sargent said on his podcast “The Daily Blast,” published on The New Republic Tuesday.
“Suddenly, multiple Republicans are all using the same disgusting talking point about the protests, referring to [protesters] as agitators and terrorists. It sure looks coordinated. They’re all using the same vile language.”
A growing number of Republican lawmakers have condemned the impending protests, and have used similar language. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) called the demonstration a “hate America rally,” as did Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN); Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) called it a “Soros paid-for protest,” referencing the billionaire liberal philanthropist George Soros, a frequent “bogeyman” on the right.
The pushback, Sargent argued, would only backfire by prompting protests to “get larger.”
“There’s nothing Trump hates more than seeing big crowds arrayed against him,” Sargent said.
Sargent was joined on the podcast by columnist Jill Lawrence, who said that while she wasn’t surprised by the GOP backlash to the impending protests, the coordinated attacks revealed the party’s growing fear of dissent among Americans.
“This is traditional, this is constitutional, this is a right, and they’re trying to turn it into something really evil. But that’s because they’re scared of it, and they know that it turns public opinion,” Lawrence said.
“The problem here is that people like Johnson and the Republicans in Congress aren’t doing their jobs. They’re not putting any checks and balances on the president, and they’re not upholding American values or even American constitutional rights. So this is where we are.”
