Trump Still Fuming Over Massive Protests, No Kings Leaders Speak Out

0:05Today, we are welcoming the founders of Indivisible and the people that brought you No Kings who have been credited with everything the Republican Party party party party. Please join me in welcoming Ezra Levin and Leah Greenberg. Great to be talking. Welcome. In your wildest dreams, when you started this idea of No Kings, did you imagine the response would be this great? Well, we knew that we have been building on energy that has been here really since the beginning of the year. You know, regular people had none of this capitulation. Regular people have not been ready to bow to Donald Trump. And so from the beginning of this year, with Tesla takedown, with No Kings on President's Day protests, with hands off in April, we knew that we were building towards something big.

0:56And then when we heard about Donald Trump's Donald Trump's party that he was going to have for himself on June 14th, we knew this was a moment to start to pull everybody together who could collectively say, no, this is ridiculous. We're not going to have an authoritarian strongman. We're not okay with anything that's going on. And we knew that this was the moment to pull them together under that banner of no kings. So we couldn't possibly expect how many people were going to come out. But we knew that there was energy there because we've been hearing from those folks all over the country all year.

1:26What's so funny is I live in Oklahoma City. So the birthday parade, which was a complete disaster, which I loved. But you're in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and there were tens of thousands of people in an extremely red state that were like, this is not democracy. This is not who we are. And so it was just it was a brilliant juxtaposition to the absolute disaster that was. And I know how successful this is, because at the last rally, Jennifer was in New York and I was in Houston visiting my sons. And again, it was just packed with people. And what tells me how effective this is, as much as being boots on the ground and observing it personally, has been the response on the right from the Trump administration.

2:12Can you guys talk a little bit about that? Look, they spent two weeks leading up to this talking about how we were going to be violent Marxists. This was going to be disaster. They painted this image that, like, America is at each other's throats, that it's red America versus blue America, that it's Trump America versus everybody else. And then lo and behold, we have the largest peaceful protest in modern American history. Actually, in all of American history, you can go to Wikipedia and look at it, 2 ,700 events, 7 million people out all over the globe. Like you said, Oklahoma City, yeah, it's in big blue cities.

2:44It's in San Francisco. It's in LA. It's in Austin. But it's also in Jenner, California, population 122. There was an event on every single island of Hawaii, four on the big island. they're 15 in Alaska. I mean, this is everywhere. And so it's been interesting to see them turn themselves into pretzels, trying to figure out how do you message this? Because an authoritarian regime depends on one thing, making you feel alone and isolated and powerless. They're not powerful. They're not strong. They want you to think you're weak. And so to have the largest peaceful protest in history, they're between a rock and a hard place, right?

3:22They're trying to figure out, God, how do we say this? So first we were violent Marxists, and then we were weird knows. And then we were old fogies. And now what they've settled on is, didn't happen, didn't exist, wasn't real. That's what they're trying to pretend, right? And it's such a sign of how important this is to demonstrate that we're not afraid to stand up to an authoritarian regime. We're not afraid to reach out to our community members. And it's a major threat to their political project, which is maximizing power in their hands and making us feel alone and powerless so that they can run roughshod over us.

3:57It's been a pathetic response. It has been a pathetic response. I'm sorry to interrupt you. I was just going to say what I found so interesting about the response, obviously the name calling, that's to be expected. These people have no decency in their bullies. But when they kept saying, this is Antifa, they're paid. I'm just like, if there was an Antifa organization where I could get a membership card, sign me up. I'm anti-fascist proudly. But them kept saying, you have to be paid to do this. These are paid agitators. That kind of, to me, was a surprising look into the souls of the people on that side.

4:36Because from the comments that I've seen and the people that I met, people felt more patriotic at those protests, being with other people like them than they do ever when, you know, it was a real feeling of fighting for democracy. Did you all also feel that? Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think that is the that's the sentiment that we're going to tap into going forward. But I also think with the paid protester piece of this, you know, this is a classic attack. They do it on people showing up at town halls. They do it on people showing up at rallies or protests. They've been doing this as long as Indivisible has been in existence.

5:07And the interesting thing about it is it always backfires because what it does is it persuades your side that there is not something very serious happening that they need to take seriously and adapt to. right? They are just dismissing massive popular opposition as some kind of weird, fake situation that they don't need to seriously factor into their own strategy and considerations. Always backfires, usually in the form of an election. Just to pick up on that patriotic element, though, I think it's very real. I do think folks on the left have ceded ground too much to the folks on the right, so that they somehow, like, they own the flag, they own patriotism.

5:44It's bullshit. It is bullshit. We should not cede that ground. We should claim it. Lee and I closed out the Pennsylvania, the Philly rally with 100 ,000 people back in June. And it was this incredible sight of people waving American flags, and we led them to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. So you had 100 ,000 people protesting monarchical rule, reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. God, it felt good. It felt good that we can actually celebrate, hey, no, that's not our country. Mac is not our country. This regime is our country. We are protecting our country. We are organizing for our country. And I think as we head in the 250th anniversary of the founding of this republic, we should embrace that.

6:23We should not cede that ground. And they're going to try to take it. We shouldn't let them. No, I completely agree because I'm like, you have a movement that is going against every single thing in the constitution. They're trying to get rid of civil assembly, speech, books. They're trying to take away the opportunity of people who were born in this country. I mean, they're going so far in to crumple up the constitution, yet they claim to be patriots. And so I'm with you when I see, like I said, I live in Oklahoma. And so when I see like trucks with the American flag on it, it kind of gives me the cringes because I'm like, you're anti-constitution, you're doing all the outward signs, but you're really, you don't care about the constitution or you would believe in democracy.

7:10And it was a way to unite people in service of the flag because I consider myself patriotic, but it's kind of cringed me out when it comes to MAGA. And that's a tough spot for an American to be in, really. MARK SHIELDS, President, We just got to own it. Take back that Gatsom flag. Take back the don't tread on me flag. Take back the American flag. Let's celebrate our history. Let's celebrate the abolitionists. Let's celebrate the suffragists. Let's celebrate the civil rights leaders. Let's celebrate the leaders at Stonewall. Like, we have a rich history of people trying to make this country better, doing it the most patriotic way they can, loving America so much that they demand more of it, that we demand that it lives up to our ideals.

7:48The movement right now that is rising up against would-be monarchical rule follows in that tradition. We got to own that though, and welcome people into the movement. I completely agree. Tell us what's coming up, because like you said, we've got a birthday party for the 250 coming up this summer, and I can't help but think that you all have done some planning in that regard. Well, the first thing that we are doing right now is we are asking everybody who showed up for No Kings to get out there and support their communities. We launched something called the No Kings Alliance, which is going to be an ongoing way to ask people to take regular action.

8:24If you were inspired by No Kings, show up, take the weekly action that is going to help us to build for the longer haul. We're going to have more mobilizations in the future, but we got a lot of work to do right now. We got to protect our communities against ICE. We got to help people who are hurt by these enormous federal government cuts and by these attacks on healthcare. We got to organize locally to get the electeds who are actually going to represent and fight for us in office. And so we've launched something called No Kings Alliance, which you can sign up for and join to get those weekly call to action.

8:52The first thing we are doing is helping people who are being hurt by the coming snap cuts and who are facing all of these challenges as a result of Republicans attacking our social services, attacking our health care during this ongoing shutdown. But we're going to be also going to push pressure corporations that are going on, that are capitulating to Trump, that are giving him what he wants. We're going to be using our dollars and we're going to be using our consumer power to push back because fundamentally right now they think they can do what he wants and they won't experience any pushback.

9:26And we got to change that equation. I agree with you. These billionaires and companies that have capitulated in advance, they're the ones that they're going to lose. I mean, it's very short sighted because their cons you know their consumers like just for example look at target yeah i mean 100 the consumer said we're not we're not doing that no so i think it's super important are there certain ways like the no kings alliance i'm going to get on absolutely get on there what's just one quick example of what the local level weekly stuff is look uh it's something we've had it with can i say this here?

10:05Absolutely. Look, I've had it with Spotify. Spotify is a good example of a corporate enabler. They are running ads to recruit for ICE right now. Your streaming is going, like if you were listening to Spotify right now, you are helping fund the recruitment of a secret police force that is terrorizing American communities, that is zip-tying children and dragging them out of apartment buildings. And they don't need to be doing that. And what we saw with Disney, What we saw with Disney and Kimmel and ABC is, look, the regime is going to pressure. The regime is going to try to get these institutions to capitulate.

10:38And a smart leader will say, well, I just got to give in. It's just about the bottom line. I can't stand up to them. But if you mobilize millions of people, which we did for Disney, 1.7 million people canceled their subscriptions. We had people protesting outside of Burbank, ABC News in New York. And they gave, they push back against the regime. We've demonstrated what's possible if we don't just take this capitulation as a natural, inevitable thing. And if we succeed in organizing against these individual institutions, what that creates, it creates a culture of defiance. It prevents the regime from concentrating control.

11:18Part of this is, yes, it's about Congress. It's about the administration. Yes, that is happening. But the way that an authoritarian regime really concentrates power is it It bullies the rest of society into submission. So we show with Disney what's possible. I think right now, if people are interested in getting involved, take a step forward, show some solidarity, push back against Spotify until they stop running these ads. And if we run a few of these campaigns in between mass mobilizations, what that looks like is the growth of a major national pro-democracy movement that's going to be able to protect their election results when they try to steal them next year.

11:51Oh, I don't think there's any question. They know how unpopular their policies are. So they're going after everybody. Okay. So you will let us know what you're planning for this summer when you have it all sorted out. Thank you so much for your, what you're doing, because this is difficult work and being boots on the ground is hard, but you have created something that people are looking to in this time. So thank you. We appreciate it. And we will stay looking for it. We are not the leaders of this. I just want to be clear. There are millions of people who are out there leading, and this is very much bottom up.

12:27So if somebody is listening to this and is like, oh, I'm glad somebody has it. Nuh-uh. You've got it. This is your message. Start organizing. Reach out to your community. Maybe it's a local indivisible group. Maybe it's 50-51. Maybe it's Working Families Party. But find your local group and get to work. This is going to take all of us doing it. That's a great point. And it's exactly opposite of the current regime, top down versus bottom up. And that's typically where we have been as a country. Thank you, Ezra. Thank you, Leah. Please make sure you let us know on all the events moving forward. NoKingsAlliance.com and Indivisible, is it.com?

13:03Indivisible.org. And you can go to NoKings.org as well. Oh,.org. Sorry, I keep saying.com. I'm a trained monkey. You can't change it. All right. Thanks, guys.

13:20You