Republican leaders say the wave of left-wing “No Kings” protests held in Washington and other cities on Saturday is contributing to Democrats’ reluctance to reach a deal to reopen the government.
House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana, Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota, and other GOP lawmakers argue that Democratic leaders are attempting to demonstrate to their liberal base that they are standing firm against former President Trump and are therefore unlikely to make concessions before the nationwide demonstrations on Saturday.
“For many of our Democrat colleagues, tomorrow is about creating, really, a spectacle,” Johnson said during a press conference Friday. “That’s what they’ve been doing here every day of the shutdown, with their little TikTok videos and their publicity stunts, and they’re going to do it in a much larger venue tomorrow.
“As the shutdown drags on, it’s becoming increasingly clear that this spectacle is the reason the Democrats have refused to reopen the government,” he added.
He said the “No Kings” organizers “distributed talking points cheering on the shutdown. I mean, they’re urging this on. They love this.”
Also, new polling shows that more Americans are beginning to blame Democrats for the ongoing shutdown.
The “No Kings” coalition said it responded to Johnson’s claims that the movement is responsible for the government shutdown with “a few moments of laughter.”
The group said in a statement obtained by the Washington Times: “Speaker Johnson is running out of excuses for keeping the government shut down. Instead of reopening the government, preserving affordable health care, or lowering costs for working families, he’s attacking millions of Americans who are peacefully coming together to say that America belongs to its people, not to kings.”
The “No Kings” organizers describe Saturday’s events as “a peaceful national day of action and mass mobilization in response to the increasing authoritarian excesses and corruption of the Trump administration, which they have doubled down on since June.”
Critics of the movement noted, sarcastically, that a true king would never allow such protests. They also point out that throughout Trump’s second term thus far, many, if not most, of his executive actions have been challenged in courts of law — which is also not something an authoritarian would tolerate.
Nevertheless, the Trump administration, according to the “No Kings” organizers, is “targeting immigrant families, profiling, arresting and detaining people without warrants; threatening to overtake elections; gutting health care, environmental protections, and education when families need them most; rigging maps to silence voters; ignoring mass shootings at our schools and in our communities; and driving up the cost of living while handling out massive giveaways to billionaire allies, as families struggle.”
Johnson and other Republicans have labeled the “No Kings” protest that will be held on the National Mall in Washington “the hate America rally.”
“If you think about what’s going to happen here tomorrow, you’re going to bring together the Marxists, the socialists, the antifa advocates, the anarchists and the pro-Hamas wing of the far left Democrat party,” Johnson said on Friday. “That is the modern Democratic Party.”
He said the left-wing radicals behind that movement hate constitutional and GOP principles of “individual freedom, limited government, the rule of law, peace through strength, fiscal responsibility, free markets, human dignity, the things that lead to human flourishing, the things that made us the greatest nation in the history of the world.”
“And some of these people are so blinded by their hatred of President Donald Trump that they can’t find one reason to celebrate America or all that we’ve accomplished and continue to accomplish under this new administration,” he added.
Johnson also blamed Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer for the continued government shutdown, accusing him of preventing passage of a clean funding bill in order to appease the left-wing mobs.