Saturday was the largest day of protests since the start of Donald Trump’s second term. Organizers of the No Kings protests estimated that more than seven million people took to the streets to declare their opposition to the president, his policies and his tactics. Indivisible, the group behind the protests, says there have been more than 2,700 events in all 50 states. That’s a huge increase from the estimated five million protesters at the claimed 2,000 No Kings Day events in June, signaling that opposition to the president may be growing.
Several individual events exceeded 100,000 attendees, including Twin Cities, New York and Chicago, which had 250,000 people. That Chicago has one of the highest turnout rates in the country is hardly surprising given the administration’s recent immigration crackdown in the city, which has led to several high-profile incidents involving ICE agents.
The response from the president and his administration was to post a series of AI comments on social media, including one in which the president dropped what appeared to be feces on protesters from a fighter jet. Perhaps most telling is that in several videos and images, Donald Trump is explicitly referred to as King Trump and depicted wearing a crown, including an image posted by the official White House X account. It appears the administration is putting pretense aside at this point.
