Mike Johnson Is Pissed the No Kings Protests Didn’t Turn Violent

Millions of Americans exercised their First Amendment rights on Saturday, turning out in the largest single-day protest in U.S. history to reject Donald Trump’s monarch-like grip on the federal government. But some leaders in Washington were unimpressed by the enormous display of dissent.

Speaking with reporters Monday morning, House Speaker Mike Johnson condemned the rhetoric of the protests, falsely claiming that the No Kings protesters advocate for violence against political officials.

“Congratulations, they didn’t burn any buildings down. That’s a big achievement for the left, to have some kind of gathering where they don’t have looting and rioting and burn a building down,” Johnson said.

By and large, the multi-month protest series has advocated for Americans’ First Amendment rights and rejected Trump’s agenda. Signage related to the event has emphasized the fight for democracy and against dictatorships. In the same political vein, No Kings participants have used their enormous visual footprint to fight against ICE’s unchecked authority, turn out for universal health care, condemn the release of disgraced former Representative George Santos, and raise national awareness to the rise of American fascism.

Somewhere between five and eight million people participated in the nationwide protest over the weekend, and it was remarkably peaceful. Organizers said that more than 2,500 individual events had been planned across the country for Saturday. Despite premature mobilizations of the National Guard in red states such as Virginia and Texas, there was no violence.

As evidence: One of the nation’s largest gatherings in New York City, which amassed some 100,000 people, according to estimates, resulted in zero protest-related arrests by the New York City Police Department.

Still, Republican leadership interpreted the event as an all out assault on the president’s life.

“Over and over again, you could see signs like ‘86-47,’” said House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, referring to an old restaurant term that means to nix an item off the menu. “I think everybody knows what that’s about. Multiple signs like that, advocating for the death of our president.”

Johnson was similarly unwilling to celebrate or even highlight the crowd control achievement. Instead, he fired paltry rhetorical shots at Portland, which has seen anti-ICE protesters dance and dress up in inflatable frog costumes since Trump directed the National Guard to the hipster paradise.

House Majority Whip Tom Emmer was even more vocal about his party’s contempt for the anti-Trump demonstration. Speaking at the same conference, Emmer falsely claimed that protests were the fruit of an alliance between establishment Democrats and domestic terrorists.

“It’s pure partisan politics in a desperate attempt to score points with the radical, pro-terrorist wing of their party,” Emmer said. “Now that their Hate America Rally is over, I hope that at least five Senate Democrats will finally do the right and responsible thing by breaking ranks with Chuck Schumer, passing our clean C.R., and reopening the government.”

Meanwhile, political violence has proved to be a phenomenon that persists in and defies both major parties, failing to fall neatly into a convenient, sellable narrative that can be repackaged for voters or donors. In truth, recent spikes in political violence have harmed both public figures (Charlie Kirk, Melissa Hortman) and regular Americans alike.

The only common denominator amongst all recent political violence is wide public access to guns, a detail that sets the U.S. far apart from the rest of the developed world.

Donald Trump on Sunday admitted, once again, that he is treating the ongoing government shutdown as a revenge tour against Democrats, boasting about impeding federal funds for a crucial transit route in the New York metropolitan area.

On day one of the shutdown, White House budget director Russell Vought announced that he would withhold funds for the Hudson Tunnel project, a plan to expand service along the country’s busiest rail route via new and improved rail tunnels connecting New York City and New Jersey.

Vought said the freeze was to ensure the funds were not used for diversity, equity, and inclusion purposes. But the president’s comments reveal “DEI” to have been a fig leaf, with the move actually meant to hurt Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat who has long pushed for the project.

Making this ulterior motive not-so-ulterior, Trump last week said: “The project in New York, it’s billions and billions of dollars that Schumer has worked 20 years to get. It’s terminated. Tell him it’s terminated.”

On Sunday, the president continued to make clear that he’s using the shutdown to exact revenge on Democrats, particularly vis-à-vis the Hudson Tunnel project.

“As of now, it’s terminated,” Trump said of the project while aboard Air Force One. “And that’s up to me. And as of now it’s terminated, and it’s terminated because the Democrats are so foolish, what they’ve done to the country.”

It’s a damning sound bite. While Trump’s intended target is clearly Schumer, the real victims of the move are the hundreds of thousands of rail riders who commute daily across the Hudson River—not to mention the millions more adversely impacted by other cuts Trump has made during the shutdown to programs that he claims Democrats “like.”

On Sunday, Justice Department whistleblower Erez Reuveni told 60 Minutes what the public has suspected for months now: The Trump administration told him to lie to a judge about Kilmar Ábrego García being a gang member after it mistakenly deported him.

“And I respond up the chain of command: No way. That is not correct. That is not factually correct, it’s not legally correct. That is a lie. And I cannot sign my name to that briefing,” Reuveni, who has since been fired from the DOJ, said.

“You’re not saying Ábrego García is a choirboy, you’re just saying no one had managed to prove that he was a terrorist,” 60 Minutes host Scott Pelley replied.

“Here’s the really important thing. Whether Mr. Ábrego García is or isn’t a member of MS-13 or a terrorist or anything else, is beside the point,” Reuveni continued. “What matters here is that they did everything they did to him in violation of his due process rights. What’s to stop them if they decide they don’t like you anymore? To say you’re a criminal, you’re a member of MS-13? You’re a terrorist? What’s to stop them from sending in some DOJ attorney at the direction of DOJ leadership to delay, to filibuster, and if necessary, to lie?”

The Trump administration has been peddling lies about Ábrego García for months, even comparing him to Osama bin Laden.

“The administration maintains the position that this individual who was deported to El Salvador and will not be returning to our country was a member of the brutal and vicious MS-13 gang,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said, back in April. “That is fact number one. Fact number two: We also have credible intelligence proving that this individual was involved in human trafficking. And fact number three: This individual was a member, actually a leader, of the brutal MS-13 gang, which this president has designated as a foreign terrorist organization.”

These were all lies. Ábrego García remains in ICE detention in Pennsylvania after the administration failed to deport him to Africa, despite his having no ties to the continent.

Donald Trump suspended aid to a country whose leader compared him to Adolf Hitler—and has since accused the U.S. president of murder.

Trump announced Sunday that he would slash all financial assistance for Colombia. He claimed on Truth Social that the decision was in response to levels of drug trafficking from Colombia to the United States, calling Colombian President Gustavo Petro “an illegal drug leader strongly encouraging the massive production of drugs, in big and small fields, all over Colombia.”

The U.S. president later told reporters that he planned to impose new tariffs on the Latin American country. It’s unclear what the new level would be, or how much aid would be cut. The New York Times reported Sunday that Trump had previously slashed aid to Colombia to about one fourth of what was promised at the beginning of the year.

On Saturday, Petro took to social media to criticize the Trump administration for carrying out an extrajudicial military strike on a Colombian vessel in September, claiming that the attack had killed a lifelong fisherman. “U.S. government officials have committed a murder and violated our sovereignty in territorial waters,” Petro wrote on social media.

This wasn’t the first time Petro had spoken out against Trump. Speaking in front of the United Nations last month, Petro called Trump America’s “new Hitler.”

“The old societies of Europe are collapsing,” he said, “and the United States is applauding its new Hitler. It’s not listening to its own young people, or its older people who died in the battlefields of Europe, fighting against Hitler and against his criminal ideology. Today, the same thing is being done as Hitler did, building concentration camps for migrants, and it’s stated that migrants are of an inferior race, and they blame them just like Hitler blamed the Jews. They call them drug traffickers and thieves.”

Petro responded Sunday to Trump’s outburst, in a post on X, claiming the Trump administration had been “rude and ignorant” toward Colombia, in spite of his country’s respect for American culture.

“I don’t do business like you do; I am a socialist, I believe in aid and the common good and in the common goods of humanity, the greatest of all: life, put in danger by your oil,” he wrote. “If I am not a merchant, then much less a drug trafficker; in my heart there is no greed.

“I could never get along with greed,” he added.

Donald Trump’s latest meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy began with lunch and ended in a shouting match.

The attempted peace negotiation Friday reportedly saw Trump cussing out the Ukrainian leader and throwing Zelenskiy’s maps of the battlefield while insisting that he cede portions of Ukraine-controlled eastern Donbas to Russia.

Trump’s options for the war-battered leader, according to a European official that spoke with the Financial Times, were either accept Russian President Vladimir Putin’s terms or “be destroyed.”

“If [Putin] wants it, he will destroy you,” Trump reportedly told Zelenskiy.

But leaders in Ukraine’s Parliament understand that Putin’s offer is a fundamentally impossible choice.

“To give [the Donbas] to Russia without a fight is unacceptable for Ukrainian society, and [Russian President Vladimir] Putin knows that,” Oleksandr Merezhko, who chairs the Ukrainian Parliament’s foreign affairs committee, told the Financial Times.

European governments rushed to Zelenskiy’s defense, alarmed by Trump’s trust that the Russian dictator would end the encroachment on such terms.

“We see President Trump’s efforts to bring peace to Ukraine, all these efforts are welcome but we don’t see Russia wanting peace,” Kaja Kallas, the EU’s top diplomat, told the Financial Times on Monday. “We are discussing what more we can do.”

Trump (and his wife Melania) has boasted for years about his cozy relationship with Putin, but in recent months appeared to pull an about-face on his opinion of the Ukraine-Russia conflict, seemingly negotiating in favor of Ukraine.

Last month, Trump claimed that Ukraine could reclaim all of its occupied territory, and last week raised the possibility of delivering Tomahawk missiles—which have a range of more than 1,500 miles with incredible accuracy—to Kyiv should Russia not end its assault.

Putin’s other strategies for a peace deal have similarly involved egregious land grabs. Earlier this year, Trump and his allies were more than willing to reverse long-standing U.S. policy by acknowledging Crimea as part of Russia. That flub made Kremlin propagandists on state-sponsored television laugh at the downfall of American power.

Trump claimed Sunday night that he and Zelenskiy “never discussed” ceding all of Donbas, but that the Ukrainian president should just “let it be cut the way it is.”

“I think 78 percent of the land is already taken by Russia. You leave it the way it is right now,” he told reporters on Air Force One.

Our vice president is spending his days beefing with a 23-year-old liberal influencer over an AI video our president posted of himself dropping a massive load of shit on protesters from a fighter jet. 

The video, posted on Saturday, depicts Trump piloting a fighter jet and wearing a golden crown while “Danger Zone” by Kenny Loggins plays in the background. The jet then flies over massive No Kings protests, dropping large piles of liquidy poop on the people below. Democratic Gen Z influencer Harry Sisson is featured prominently, and is covered in poop in seconds. 

It’s almost hard to fathom how incredibly stupid and absurd the video is, much less the fact that it was posted by the sitting president. 

“Can a reporter please ask Trump why he posted an AI video of himself dropping poop on me from a fighter jet?” Sisson posted on X on Sunday. “That would be great thanks.” 

Vice President Vance felt the need to chime in. “I’ll ask him for you Harry.” 

Sisson is known for making pro–Democratic establishment TikToks aimed at high schoolers and college undergraduates. The vice president shouldn’t even know who he is, much less be replying to him snarkily over perhaps the stupidest thing the president has ever posted. And yet this proves once again that Vance, a true shitposter at heart, is more concerned with “winning” the internet than he is with actually leading the country. 

“I think this proves beyond a reasonable doubt that both Donald Trump and JD Vance are mentally deranged,” Sisson later said on his Instagram. “And it’s incredibly concerning that these are the people who have access to the nuclear codes … I think this is so pathetic.”  

What is the Trump administration’s obsession with posting these tacky AI videos anyway? From the sombrero video with Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer to a Fox News deepfake, the president seems to be incredibly fond of the slop. 

Vice President JD Vance’s team ridiculed California Governor Gavin Newsom for closing a stretch of Interstate 5 amid a Saturday military demonstration by the Trump administration (coincidentally on the same day as the No Kings protests). Then, during the display, shrapnel rained down in the area, hitting vehicles in Vance’s motorcade.

When it was announced that the military would fire artillery shells over I-5 in the Golden State for the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Marine Corps, Newsom objected, saying President Donald Trump was putting his “ego” over “public safety,” and closed part of the freeway.

A Vance spokesperson told media outlets that Newsom was being misleading about “an established safe practice,” and called the governor’s decision consistent with a “track record of failure.”

But on Saturday afternoon, an artillery round, fired near where highway patrol personnel in Vance’s security detail were parked after escorting the vice president to the Marines’ 250th event at Camp Pendleton, detonated prematurely. Highway officers “saw the artillery round fail to clear the highway and explode near southbound lanes,” reported the BBC.

According to The New York Times, one officer heard something similar to pebbles striking his motorcycle and the surrounding area, where shrapnel was later discovered. Two others watched a piece of shrapnel hit their patrol car’s hood. It left a minor dent. Vance’s team—so quick to jeer at Newsom previously—was apparently chastened by the accident, declining to comment to the Times.

Afterward, Newsom shot off a series of deserved I-told-you-so posts on social media. “Donald Trump and JD Vance put lives at risk to put on a show,” he wrote in one post. “This could have killed someone,” he said in another, responding to a Fox News report downplaying the incident.

And just like that, Prince Andrew is no longer a duke.

The second son of Queen Elizabeth II has been on the outs with the rest of the British royal family since the late Virginia Giuffre, one of pedophilic sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein’s most prominent accusers, first claimed in the 2010s that she had been forced to have sex with the prince while she was a minor.

The king appeared to take matters into his own hands Friday. After years of Andrew being relegated to the fringes of royal life, King Charles III formally stripped his 65-year-old brother of his royal duties. In a concise statement, Prince Andrew acknowledged that his sorry reputation had become a distraction for the rest of the monarchy.

“In discussion with The King, and my immediate and wider family, we have concluded the continued accusations about me distract from the work of His Majesty and the Royal Family,” the prince wrote in a statement released by Buckingham Palace. “As I have said previously, I vigorously deny the accusations against me.

“With His Majesty’s agreement, we feel I must now go a step further. I will therefore no longer use my title or the honours which have been conferred upon me,” Prince Andrew continued. “As I have said previously, I vigorously deny the accusations against me.”

Prince Andrew, as a son of the late queen, will retain his title of “prince,” but he has relinquished several other titles since speaking with the king, including his standing as Duke of York and membership of the Order of the Garter—two titles that brought him enormous pride.

He cut his military affiliations, ended his royal patronages, and stopped using the style of “His Royal Highness” in 2022 during a civil case brought by Giuffre. The prince settled that lawsuit without admitting any wrongdoing.

Officially nullifying the prince’s titles will, however, take some more time, as the deed requires an official act of Parliament.

The family’s decision to sever ties with Prince Andrew arrived several days after the publication of Giuffre’s posthumous memoir Nobody’s Girl, in which she details at least three incidents in which the prince allegedly raped her.

But Giuffre’s disturbing accusations were far from the only bad press that plagued the prince. Public interest in his personal finances and judgment have also been a sore spot for the family, as was Andrew’s decision to cozy up to an accused Chinese spy.

Puzzlingly, Andrew’s misdeeds were not severe enough to peel him from the monarchy’s succession plan: He will still remain eighth in line for the throne. He will also remain in his Windsor home, Royal Lodge, where he has a private lease with an expiration date in 2078.

He will not, however, be present during the royal family’s Christmas festivities this year in Sandringham.

Prince William, who has had a frigid relationship with Prince Andrew, consulted his father on the decision to strip his uncle of his titles.

“This is unlikely to bring them any closer,” reported the BBC.

Prince Andrew’s children, Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie, will reportedly retain their titles, according to the British network. His ex-wife will no longer be known as the Duchess of York and instead will just be Sarah Ferguson.

The Justice Department has joined the Republican campaign to discredit Saturday’s No Kings protests, going so far as to describe the event as an attempt to “destabilize” the U.S. government.

No Kings demonstrations—which last swept the country in June—protest the monarchical nature of the Trump presidency by invoking the nation’s founding. They also explicitly name nonviolence as their “core principle.”

But Republicans would have you believe the protests planned for Saturday are “hate America” rallies, with terrorists, Hamas supporters, and antifa in attendance. GOP officials have also baselessly accused Democratic lawmakers of prolonging the government shutdown to appease these supposed radicals.

Now joining the fearmongers is a top DOJ official, Harmeet K. Dhillon, the U.S. assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division, who warned that the rally “is not your average protest” in an ominous post on X Friday.

“It’s being led by the people shutting down your government and keeping hundreds of thousands of federal workers from being paid,” Dhillon continued, referring to Democratic politicians.

“Take care and be very aware what is going on here,” she went on: “attempts to gaslight the public and destabilize our government.”

Dhillon was responding to a tweet from MAGA propagandist Laura Loomer, who, in typical inflammatory register, conflated No Kings with “political violence.”

Donald Trump’s self-advertised credentials for solving the Russia-Ukraine war: his ability to constantly get played.

Speaking to reporters during a White House lunch with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy Friday, Trump attempted to instill confidence in his negotiating tactics by describing himself as a sucker.

“Aren’t you concerned that maybe the Russian president is trying to buy himself more time?” asked a reporter.

“I am, but you know, I’ve been played all my life by the best of them, and I came out really well,” Trump said. “A little time … I’m pretty good at this stuff.”

Despite spending months boasting about his cozy relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump has pulled an about-face in his public stance on the foreign conflict in recent weeks. Last month, Trump claimed that Ukraine could reclaim all of its occupied territory, and earlier this week, he threatened to deliver Tomahawk missiles—which have a range of more than 1,500 miles—to Kyiv should Russia not end its assault.

However, seated feet away from the Ukrainian leader Friday, Trump began to waffle about sharing American munitions, expressing to the room that he was concerned about America’s diminishing supply.

“We’d much rather have them not need Tomahawks. We’d much rather have the war be over,” Trump said. “It could mean a big escalation. It could mean a lot of bad things could happen.”

The two world leaders openly negotiated on the arms while in front of reporters, with Zelenskiy suggesting that Ukraine could support the development of more drones in exchange for the missiles, which would give Kyiv power to strike far beyond Moscow.

MAGA politics neatly align with Russian interests. Halfway across the world, between the borders of America’s Cold War nemesis, elements of the MAGA agenda have already been perfected: Being gay or transgender is illegal, the majority of the country identifies homogeneously as Orthodox Christians, and NATO is a loathed institution rather than a celebrated one.

But even their closely synced political ideologies could not broker an arrangement when Trump rolled out the red carpet for Putin in Alaska this summer. After the theatrics were over, the two world leaders failed to reach a consensus on how to end the bloodshed, with Trump losing his cool while Putin demanded that Ukraine cede more territory to Russia, according to a bombshell report published by Financial Times Friday.