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Here'S what the Right is saying the right criticizes the message and organizing themes behind the no Kings protests. Some suggest the value offered by the military parade was not worth the cost. Others say the left continues to protest ineffectively against Trump. In the Daily Caller, Adam Johnston said the no Kings protestors are wrong about Flag Day. When the left speaks of defending our sacred democracy, what they really mean is defending their hold on institutional power while utilizing regime aligned direct action events like no Kings to intimidate their legitimate political opposition, johnston wrote. Despite the left's fear mongering and rhetoric about Trump acting as a king, his presidency has been marked not by unchecked power, but by the subversion and nullification of his legitimate executive power under Article 2 of the US Constitution while fighting constant resistance from within the very institutions he was elected to lead. When the left cries no Kings as Trump attempts to exercise his authority to remove criminal legal aliens from the country, he it is not fighting against despotism, it is fighting against the reassertion of national sovereignty, johnston said. Ultimately, judging by the Mexican flag waving rioters in Los Angeles, no Kings means no borders and eventually no country. Trump is not a king. He is a duly elected president attempting to dismantle a hostile regime that treats democracy as a slogan and subversion as a sacrament in reason. Billy Binion criticized the military parade as a waste. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The parade will, however, objectively be big. From the contents of the parade itself, 25 M1 Abrams main battle tanks, dozens of other military vehicles, aircraft, 6,600 soldiers marching to the price tag, which is currently estimated to come out somewhere between $25 million and $45 million for an approximately 90 minute event that comes out to 277,788 to $500,000 per minute, Binion wrote. A majority of Americans, it turns out, do not think that big cost is beautiful. 60% of respondents in a recent poll said the parade is not a good use of taxpayer money. The millions of dollars the public is paying to fund the parade, which will take place on Saturday, Trump's 79th birthday, are peanuts, the president said, when compared to the value. Yet it is difficult to reconcile that position with one of his hallmark campaign promises, reining in wasteful government spending, Binion said. Indeed, during the 2024 campaign, Trump promised to slash $2 trillion the size of the budget deficit in federal spending. That was always a bit hard to believe, particularly when considering the immense amount he had added to the national debt during his first term, trillions of dollars of which came before the COVID 19 pandemic. In the Wall Street Journal, Kimberly A. Strassel wrote about diminishing protest returns. Political memories are short, but none more fleeting than that of the Democratic collective. We've been doing this for nearly a decade and always to the left's detriment, strassel said. A brief walk down protest lane in the opening months of Mr. Trump's first presidency, the resistance staged the Women's March, airport protests against his travel ban, demonstrations against pipeline projects, a Day without Latinos, a Day Without Immigrants, not my President's Day Resist Trump Tuesday protests for transgender rights, a Day Without a Woman, a tax march on April 15, a March for science and May Day protests. Aside from a few images of ladies in funny pink hats howling at the sky, do you remember any of it? The protesters history, message and tactics are in any event obscuring any moral claim. Ten years into Mr. Trump's political career, this looks and feels like any other protest of Mr. Trump that is like a partisan moment, strassel wrote. The bigger problem for Democrats, for too many weary Americans, it continues to feel as if protest is all the left's got. The foot stomping is unaccompanied by serious plans for immigration reform, or an outreach to Republicans on a way forward, or a discussion or regret for the mistakes that led to their loss last November. It's all outrageous. Now, onto what the left is saying. The left mostly criticizes the military parade as a partisan exercise with ominous undertones. Some say the no Kings protests were a success and demonstrated the popular opposition to Trump, others argue Trump is politicizing the military as a tool to consolidate power. In Vox, Zach Beecham called the military parade a warning. Donald Trump's military parade in Washington this weekend, a show of force in the Capitol that just happens to take place on the president's birthday, smacks of authoritarian Dear Leader style politics, beachum wrote. The totality of Trump administration policies, ranging from the parade in Washington to the LA troop deployment to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth's firing of high ranking women and officers of color, suggests a concerted effort to erode the military's professional ethos and turn it into an institution subservient to the Trump administration's whims. For all its faults, the US Military's professional ethos is a really important part of its identity and self conception. While few soldiers may actually read Sam Huntington or similar scholars. The general idea that they serve the people in the republic is a bedrock principle among the ranks. There's a reason why the United States has never, in over 250 years of governance, experienced a military coup, beecham said. But we don't really know how the US Military will respond to a situation like this. Like so many of Trump's second term policies, their efforts to bend the military to their will are unprecedented actions with no real parallel in the modern history of the American military. In the Philadelphia Inquirer will, Bunch wrote, at no Kings, millions of Americans show the flag is mightier than the tank the 47th president had hoped to rule over Flag Day by deploying the artillery of a strutting strongman in his long awaited DC parade that rolled 28 Abrams M1A2 tanks and Stryker armored personnel carriers into the Capitol as Black Hawk helicopters and fighter jets buzzed at the wet and muggy skies, Bunch said. But Trump had already been defeated in the streets by everyday citizens who stopped his immoral invasion against the soul of America with a thin red, white and blue wall. On an unforgettable day when several million regular folks marched for an event called no Kings, the American flag was mightier than the tank. The overriding message from no Kings was one of courage. The organizers were never looking for unrest, but simply for big numbers. Not to show just other Americans but an increasingly anxious world that Trump and ICE are not acting in their name. The longer term hope is that massive resistance from the people will change not only the warped media narrative after Trump's 2024 election, but also convince enough lawmakers on Capitol Hill to block his extreme agenda, bunch wrote. Saturday's vibe shift was clearly felt in Washington, where the tank driven parade that so many feared would provide a chilling glimpse of North Korea spiced totalitarianism on the Potomac turned out to be a surprisingly low energy affair. In the Atlantic, Graham Parsons said the parade was another step in an ongoing effort to turn the US Military into a partisan and personal instrument of the president. A mark of a free society is that its public institutions, especially its military, represent the body politic and the freedom enabling equal rights that structure civic life. If service members and the public begin to believe that the military is not neutral but is in fact the servant of maga, this will threaten the military's legitimacy and increase the likelihood of violent conflicts between the military and the public, parsons wrote. The organizers have made it abundantly clear that the parade's purpose is to directly laud Trump and his politics. In promotional materials. They tell US Quote, Under President Trump's leadership, the army has been restored to strength and readiness. They credit his, quote, america first agenda for military pay increases, enlarged weapons stockpiles, new technologies and improvements in recruitment. The president now routinely speaks to uniformed service members in his red MAGA hat, using his trademark rhetoric, centering himself and belittling, even demonizing, his critics. He openly suggests a special alliance between him and the military. At Fort Bragg on Tuesday, for instance, Trump encouraged uniformed soldiers to cheer his political agenda and boo his enemies. Parsons said, this is all extremely dangerous. Keeping the military a politically neutral servant of the constitutional order, not the president or his political ideology, is vital to ensuring the security of civil society. All right, now back to Isaac for his take.
