OPINION:
It couldn’t be funnier that the “No Kings” protest planners changed their branding on international versions of the events so as not to offend actual kings.
Seriously, they did that.
In the lead-up to their demonstrations against President Trump in various U.S. cities last weekend, American leftists also planned to protest their president on foreign soil in various locations around the world.
However, they found themselves with a problem: If they disparaged Mr. Trump as acting like a monarch, they risked running afoul of the authorities in places where monarchs actually have power.
Democrats Abroad, an official organ of the Democratic National Committee aimed at Americans overseas, wanted to make sure everyone got the heads-up.
“We’ve changed the ‘No Kings’ theme of other events around the world to ‘No Tyrants,’ so as not to mix messages in a country with a monarchy,” reads a section of the Democrats Abroad website.
Well, it wasn’t really avoidance of “mixed messages” as much as it was an acknowledgment that the basic premise of their entire protest was complete nonsense.
Think about it.
If the only place you can derisively call someone a “king” is somewhere they don’t have a real king, then Mr. Trump is not a king. Not only is he not a king but he is also not acting like one if people are free to criticize him.
The Democrats Abroad were not finished there.
“We’re also swapping out ‘No Crowns!’ in favor of ‘No Clowns!’” they continued.
You see, they are cautious not to insult actual royalty — you know, the people who wear crowns — which tends to undermine the seriousness of their charges that Mr. Trump behaves like an authoritarian.
As a final note on the website, Democrats Abroad warned people against commenting on current events inside the foreign nations in which they live because they are “restricted from commenting on international affairs and host country politics.”
The last Democrat who had any sense of irony must have died a long time ago because right there is the key difference between the freedoms we enjoy as Americans and the lack of such freedoms faced by people in many other parts of the world. In the United States, you can openly criticize the government and its leaders, but in some other places, you cannot.
Naturally, American leftists are putting the “king” label in the wrong place.
Kings and tyrants regularly stomp on free speech and impede the ability of regular people to criticize things they don’t like. What moronic American leftists don’t realize is that their complaints about freedom in their own country would be better aimed at almost any other nation on earth.
Speaking of moronic American leftists, Chuck Todd popped up his head with a message for anyone who opposed the “No Kings” rallies.
“Protesting is ‘the most American thing you can do,’” the former host of NBC’s “Meet the Press” said in a video posted on X, repeating what all lefties say when there’s a Republican in the White House. “I shut down criticism of the ‘No Kings’ protest.”
Got negative thoughts about the “No Kings” events? One of the most prominent TV journalists of the last several decades says you should shut up.
Because of jokers like Mr. Todd, it’s easy to forget that almost everything the left complains about today was a central issue in last year’s presidential campaign. Mr. Trump won all seven battleground states, and the left still hasn’t gotten over it.
That’s why they present these rallies as popular opposition to the actions taken by the Trump administration, but that’s as far from the truth as it can get. In presentation and messaging, the “No Kings” rallies are nothing more than a prolonged tantrum over the 2024 election results. More revealingly, they are funded, planned and staged by the same network of leftist money groups that tried and failed to defeat Mr. Trump last year.
This is all political theater, base Democratic Party campaign politics, and it’s more of a practice turnout operation for the 2026 midterms than anything else.
It explains why Mr. Todd’s former colleagues in network TV gushed and breathlessly reported favorable attendance figures that had been spoon-fed to them by the organizers. Notably, none of the network newscasts assigned an ideological label to the protesters, such as “liberal” or “progressive,” according to the watchdog Media Research Center, likely because they shared the activists’ sentiments.
If the media were to accurately identify the activists and examine their arguments, they would have to point out the glaring flaw in their logic, as revealed by the nonsense from Democrats Abroad.
If they have the freedom of speech to call the president a “king” while they stand on American soil but can’t say the same word in a foreign country, where is the authoritarianism again?
• Tim Murtaugh is a Washington Times columnist and founder of Line Drive Public Affairs. He served as a senior adviser on the 2024 Trump campaign and as communications director on the 2020 Trump campaign.
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