Americans take to the streets*

Patriots were everywhere Saturday — *except at Trump’s dumb birthday party

We really, really needed that.

After a November election that felt like the end of the world, after months of attacks on values and institutions we hold dear, after a Democratic official and her husband were murdered Saturday morning, we needed to see that we weren’t the only ones heartbroken, freaked out and super pissed off.

And the people came through.

All around the world, brave patriots took to the streets to declare with one voice: NO KINGS. In Los Angeles and Minnesota especially, the rallies were an act of defiance. Violence and occupation won’t stop us. They only strengthen our resolve and make us madder.

L.A. saw more violence from the police last night after a week of being occupied by the National Guard and Marines. Minnesotans were advised to skip the protest because a political assassin is still on the loose. Both L.A. and Minnesota took to the streets anyway.

All told, an estimated 4-6 million people joined the protests in the U.S., according to an analysis by G. Elliott Morris. As he pointed out on Bluesky, that’s about 2 percent of the population. And as Princeton Professor Kevin Kruse noted, the infamous Tea Party protests of 2009 only had about a third of a million people show up. Ours was definitely bigger.

From big cities to small towns, from Blue States to Blue Dots, Americans turned out yesterday to reject Trump’s bullshit. There were massive crowds everywhere. Well, almost everywhere.

The only place that really lacked for a big crowd yesterday was Trump’s embarrassing birthday party for himself (and the U.S. Army) that was so sparsely attended that you could actually hear the tank wheels squeaking as they tore up the streets. The White House immediately tried to lie and claim that 250,000 people showed up, but anyone with eyes knows that’s absolute bullshit.

Hell, even Trump knew it. Just look at how miserable he is.

Hahahahahahaha! Goddamn that’s hilarious. And it got better. Marco Rubio is on video yawning, and some reports said that Melania fell asleep. What a fucking disaster.

It was exactly the Saturday we needed to keep us going.

These last few weeks and months have been hard for the decent people of this nation. So many are wondering if we’ve already lost everything that’s important to us. Not a day goes by that we don’t get emails or comments telling us to stop counting down the days until the midterms because we won’t have fair elections next year.

But on Saturday we saw why we can never give up. Because there are too many of us desperate for this country to be better and eager to make it so. They’ve got the guns, but we’ve got the numbers.

That’s why the No Kings rally was so important. We didn’t just send a message to Trump and his pets in the media. We also sent a message to ourselves — We are not alone, we are not intimidated and we are not stopping.

We might get tired, and we might be afraid sometimes. But we are Americans, and we are way too fucking stubborn to just roll over and die. We’re just getting warmed up.

So THANK YOU to everyone who showed up for a protest yesterday. And thank you to everyone who didn’t show up for Trump’s loser birthday party. We really, really needed it.

And next time there will be even more of us.