King Shit
Last weekend, 7-8 million of us took to the streets to protest the Donald Trump administration. The movement quickly coalesced around a motto earlier this year, “No Kings.” This was likely the largest protest in American history.
Naysayers nearly immediately asked what it was we were accomplishing, pointing out that he has not been completely stopped and that the protests have not directly affected his policies.
That criticism comes from a misunderstanding of what protests are for. Our primary purpose is merely one of visibility. We showed the administration millions of us are willing to fight him. We showed Republican enablers how unpopular they are. We showed the world America does not accept what is happening. But the most important thing here is that we showed everyone who believes in this that they are not alone. There are great articles about what was accomplished last weekend, but in multiple discussions with friends I focused on one thing.
Things are dark right now. Being informed about what’s happening is not great for your mental health. Many have given in to despair and catastrophizing. What I felt last Saturday was the opposite. I felt emboldened by the support of the community. I felt less alone. And I felt HOPEFUL for the first time in a long time. That alone is a huge accomplishment. If the protests did nothing other than to make those of us fighting him feel better, THAT ALONE is an incredible thing!
You cannot cover this man without being negative. But I believe we get through this. And I believe we defeat his rancid ideology so the country can begin to heal. There are thousands of pictures from last weekend covering the huge range of people who came out to support each other. If you are looking for something uplifting, seek them out.
Now let’s see how the president has spent the week since the protest accusing him of acting as a king.
The president responded to the accusation he is acting as a king by posting yet another AI-generated video. This one had him wearing a crown flying a fighter jet over those of us protesting him. The jet’s bays open and dump massive amounts of shit on the protestors. The likeness of Harry Sisson, a young Democratic activist, was included in the crowd. The president is posting videos of himself as a king literally dumping shit on his critics. House Speaker Mike Johnson responded only by saying the president is good at social media and likes to use satire. The satire was the president shitting on Americans who disagree with him.
The president offended by being referred to as a king has unilaterally destroyed the entire East Wing of the White House. It has been razed completely to the ground. He has no legal authority to do this. Both spending and fundraising for the US government are explicit functions of Congress, not the legislative branch. (More on this later.) There are procedures that must be followed to modify the White House. None of those have been followed. The man in charge of assessing the legal authority of such changes is a Trump appointee who says those laws only refer to construction and not demolition. His predecessor has correctly pointed out that is nonsense. Donald Trump has torn down a huge portion of the White House, with no permission from anyone, using money he does not have the authority to spend.
Donald Trump is demanding $230 million from the Department of Justice because they investigated him. The president wants his own government to pay him nearly a quarter of a billion dollars as SNAP benefits are on the cusp of expiring. He is more concerned about enriching himself than he is children starving.
The man who insists he is not a king is once again insisting on the prosecution of his critics. This time, the president said former FBI Director Christopher Wray, Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, former Attorney General Merrick Garland, and former Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco should be prosecuted for their role in cheating him out of the 2020 election. Wray was Trump’s own FBI director at the time. Garland was an appeals court judge who had nothing to do with the election. Jack Smith worked at the Hague. Lisa Monaco was in private practice. None of these people had anything to do with the 2020 election and illustrate the difficulty Republicans have in determining which year came first among two options. House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan has demanded Jack Smith defend the search warrant served at Mar-a-Lago which discovered stolen classified documents. Smith was appointed months after that search and had nothing at all to do with it.
The White House has solicited a private donation to pay military members during the shutdown. They have been bragging about the $130 million donation from Timothy Mellon. Such payments are blatantly illegal. Individuals MAY donate money directly to the government. They may not direct where that money goes. There is a specific Treasury fund for these donations. The money in those funds must be appropriated by Congress. Trump is flagrantly violating this law, but we have seen dozens of times Trump and OMB Director Russ Vought have simply falsely claimed the executive branch can spend or not spend wherever they see fit, regardless of what laws Congress has passed. While the Antideficiency Act makes this explicit, one does not need to look past the Constitution itself which gives explicit and exclusive appropriation powers to Congress. Illegality aside, this payment covered 8 hours of payroll, not including civilian contractors, not even half a day.
The not-king continues to extrajudiciously murder people in international waters, claiming they are drug dealers. Gustavo Pietro, Colombia’s president, publicly excoriated the United States for killing its citizens. We are starting to learn the names of the men killed by the US military and so far no evidence has been presented of any of them trafficking drugs. Notably if they had been trafficking drugs, that does not give the United States authority to kill them. Charred body parts have begun washing up on the shores of Trinidad, macabre souvenirs from the US military. The man who insists he is not a king says he does not have to consult Congress here and can murder these men because by his own determination, they’re bringing drugs into the United States. We have sanctioned Colombia because its president complained about the US killing its citizens. And now the US military is moving a carrier group into the area.
A Canadian province ran an ad of a Ronald Reagan speech about how bad tariffs are. This position has not been controversial for a century because a first year economics student can explain to you precisely why tariffs, which are just sales taxes, are bad policy. President In-No-Way-A-King has responded by ending trade negotiations with Canada, raising US tariffs on Canadian imports, and accusing Canada of lying about Reagan’s position and possibly using AI to do so. He added that Reagan loved tariffs. This is another blatant Trump lie. The speech was not misrepresented. Reagan, like everyone else who has taken an economics course, understood why tariffs are terrible. The Supreme Court will be hearing a case next month regarding Trump’s authority to impose tariffs. I will never make a prediction about how this court will rule, but the law is clear here - outside of certain emergency situations, he does not have this authority. They cite things like merely having a trade deficit as an emergency when it’s quite clear trade deficits are not emergencies. They aren’t even BAD things, which Trump does not understand.
The White House has updated their website with a list of “major” events that include the following:
Donald Trump’s response to being accused of acting like a king is to post a video of himself as one shitting on US citizens, blowing up trade with our second largest economic partner, claiming sole authority to murder South American fishermen, literally tearing down the White House, soliciting payments to the military from billionaire friends outside the scope of Congress, insisting more of his opponents be prosecuted, and adding stolen images of his predecessor’s son to the White House website to falsely accuse him of dropping drugs in the White House.
We are 68 days away from beginning an election year. America has no kings. We have work to do in 2026 to ensure he does not become one.
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