MAGA Rage at "No Kings" Boils Over--and It Quickly Backfires on Trump (Greg Sargent in The New Republic)

[highplainsdem]

Link below is the one-paragraph intro for an 18-minute interview you can.listen to on that page, with the transcript here: https://newrepublic.com/article/201709/transcript-maga-rage-no-kings-boils-over-exposing-trump-weak

https://newrepublic.com/article/201672/maga-rage-no-kings-boils-over-and-quickly-backfires-trump

President Trump’s allies are suddenly raging over the October 18 No Kings protests. MAGA Mike Johnson and MAGA-fied Representative Steve Scalise are angrily sliming expected attendees as America-haters, antifa, Marxists, and terrorists. MAGA influencers and other GOP figures have done the same, with one hinting that the National Guard should crack down on them. This unanimity of messaging about “terrorists” means it’s all almost certainly being coordinated by Stephen Miller. Yet it’s backfiring: Democrats and rally organizers are using it to galvanize attendance, which will likely succeed. Robert De Niro amplified the call to turn out, inspiring more anger on Fox News. Indeed, the GOP demonization of legitimate protests itself ratifies the “No Kings” message. We talked to Jill Lawrence, who writes well for The Bulwark on Trump’s hatred of blue America. We discuss why large legitimate protests infuriate Trump-MAGA, why the correct response to their smears is to turn out in force, and why that’s likely to happen. Listen to this episode here. A transcript is here.

From the transcript: https://newrepublic.com/article/201709/transcript-maga-rage-no-kings-boils-over-exposing-trump-weak

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Sargent: Well, they clearly hope for some sort of violence, which either will allow them to respond with violence of their own—state violence—or to demonize the protests as terrorism and extremism. You know, the funny thing about this is, as you alluded to, the more people show up, the more other people feel supported, and it really is a sort of snowballing effect that can take place in these situations. And I think that’s what really worries them.

Lawrence: I think they should be worried, because nothing they’re doing is popular. And people who may support them generally on issues like crime and immigration are seeing how they carry out these policies. And he’s down on his best issues in polls, and the midterms—if they go ahead fairly and freely—will put a check on Trump, at least through the House. So that’s the problem. And the more momentum the protests gather, and the more peaceful they are, and the more it’s obvious that there are troops hanging around with nothing to do except maybe provoke people, then the worse it’s gonna get for them.

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What makes me very upset—and I don’t want to make this any more depressing than it already is—but, I mean, we’re coming onto the 250th anniversary of our country, when all of these rights were defined and set out and thought to be permanent—as permanent as we could make them. And so I really hope that these protests work out, that people keep their heads—and I include the National Guard troops and anyone else there in a law-enforcement capacity—because they can’t be happy about having to do this, most of them. So hopefully everyone is calm, and we get through this, and it’s a great demonstration of opposition to the administration.

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