MAGA brands anti-Trump protestors 'American traitors'

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0:30people. And I just I'm beyond words. I can't believe they're actually doing this. That is the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson. The hate America march that he's talking about, which will be full of Hamas supporters and Antifa supporters, is actually a no kings protest saying that Donald Trump is assuming too much power. So is the MAGA movement foolish or smart for trying to make ordinary Americans feel like they're radical traitors if they march. Welcome to the News Agents USA. The News Agents USA with Emily Maitlis and John Sopel. It's John. It's Emily and it is the second one of these marches called No Kings which are very grassroots in essence.

1:21In other words, it is not one big march on the Washington Mall. It is an idea that the organisers hope will permeate all cities, all towns, all homesteads, all parts of America with the idea that if you are not happy with the way you feel America is being governed right now, the overreach of the executive office, you will come onto the streets with your neighbours and say, we've had enough. And of course, the implication of this kind of movement is that America must not return to pre-revolutionary times when George III was running the country and he was the king from England who didn't really care about Americans.

2:07And America doesn't want another king, another imperial kind of ruler over them. and that therefore some of the powers that Donald Trump has accrued since he became president again in January need to be checked. Yeah. Now, the last time they had one of these No Kings rallies was back in June. They had five million demonstrators out on the streets that day. And the one on Saturday they're hoping will dwarf that number quite considerably because I think the context here is important. The demonstrations are happening against a backdrop of conflict. You've got government at a complete standstill. It's been shut down over a standoff, basically, between the Republican and the Democrats in Congress.

2:52The Democrats want to see the Affordable Care Act, health care for ordinary Americans, extended, and the Republicans have refused to do that in their budget. So you have got thousands and thousands of federal workers who are, A, not at work, B, not getting paid, see have been threatened that they may not ever get paid for this time that they have been forced to take off work. But you've also got, really importantly, this sort of alternative army on the streets of America in the shape of both federal troops that Trump has now positioned in certain democratic cities, we've talked about that in the past, but also in the shape of the immigration officials, many of whom are masked, many of whom are operating basically anonymously to remove people that they alone decide should be removed from going about their ordinary lives and chucking them out, forcing them out of the country.

3:51And we've talked about the weaponisation of the justice system and going after certain people who have been enemies of Donald Trump. And there's a very interesting case that the Supreme Court is hearing at the moment and heard evidence about on Wednesday of this week which would essentially gut the Voting Rights Act of 60 years ago that was the kind of landmark legislation of LBJ which ensured that there would be fair representation for black people across the country in terms of districting and what they're going to do and it looks like the Supreme Court is persuaded by this argument is to say you can do what you like you don't have to worry about the racial makeup of a constituency which means redistricting and possibly handing Republicans an extra 20 seats in the midterms, which would make it virtually impossible for the Republicans ever to lose control.

4:41So the No Kings idea, you're talking about trying to stop potentially the creation of a one party state. Yeah. I mean, a monarch, an estate. Yeah. Yeah. And why this has all got so complicated, specifically, I guess, since the assassination of Charlie Kirk, was that the narrative and the language within the MAGA movement changed. Donald Trump decreed not that it was, you know, a lone shooter, an idiot, a criminal with a gun and a good shot who took out an opponent. And may have had some mental health problems. There is so much we don't know about the assassination of Charlie Kirk, but there has been no proof yet that he was part of what Donald Trump is calling a domestic terror network.

5:29In spite of that, he has ordered a crackdown on what he calls Antifa, as if Antifa were an actual organisation with, you know, a head, a phone number, a committee, a funding organisation, etc. Antifa is a movement and it's a movement of people who call themselves anti-fascist. The reason why this is such a delicate moment is, as you've heard in the words of Mike Johnson, the House Speaker, they are trying to make those who protest be associated with a radicalised terrorist network that they have essentially created in their own imagination. and so they are watching I guess for any signs of violence for any signs of unrest the organisers of the march keep on saying this is about civil disobedience it is civil disobedience in other words you know I know that's not actually what civil means in this context it means you know ordinary civilians but they're saying for god's sake make this peaceful do not fall into the trap of making this protest something that it shouldn't be.

6:42Do not get violent. Do not start fighting. Do not loot. Do not destroy property. For God's sake, the world or America is watching right now and it has to be the calmest, the most organised, the most, if you like, family-friendly kind of protests on the streets because otherwise they'll be at your throats. Yes, and what Donald Trump would like to be able to say on Sunday or Monday is that these protesters were anti-american hate america loath america they're dangerous etc etc and there'll be a sizable chunk of his base who will absolutely go along with that viewpoint and i'm sure there'll be one or two people who will you know be anarchists or whatever who will want to lob a molotov cocktail or will want to break the windows of whatever it happens to be and donald trump will seize on those pictures to try and paint all the rest of the protesters as that Look, the protest is attracting some significant support.

7:39This is a little-known actor called Robert De Niro. Americans decided they didn't want to live under the rule of King George III. They declared their independence and fought a bloody war for democracy. We've had two and a half centuries of democracy since then, often challenging, sometimes messy, always essential. And we fought in two world wars to preserve it. Now we have a would-be king who wants to take it away, King Donald the First. Fuck that. We're rising up again this time nonviolently raising our voices to declare no kings. I'm Robert De Niro asking you to stand up and be counted in the nationwide no kings protest on October 18th.

8:20Yeah so that is Robert De Niro who has long been a critic of Donald Trump and doesn't mince his words in his views on the president calling for people to come out and support this much and i guess this is a moment where you know we've kind of laid out some of the stuff that's gone on and you know and particularly emily what you were talking about about the behavior of these ice officers the immigration and customs enforcement guys who are wearing the bandanas and they're not wearing identical uniforms and they're not wearing name tags and they are snatching people off the streets if they happen to be brown and they're not quite sure about them and you don't quite know in what facilities they're being detained.

8:59Look, this is cutting across the MAGA base. There is no unanimity of support for Donald Trump in this crackdown. The idea of a crackdown on illegal immigrants who've committed heinous crimes, yeah, everyone is behind that. But just the randomness by which people going to work on a building site or in a field are being plucked from their lives, even though they've been paying taxes and being put into detention facilities is causing real alarm even among the MAGA base. Yeah. And if you're watching the protests take place on Saturday and you see a certain number of inflatable frogs crossing the road, we're going to explain to you why that might be happening.

9:39We're going to talk now to one of the organisers, Bill McKibben, co-founder of Third Act. And Bill, let me start with the depiction of it by the Speaker Mike Johnson, where he says essentially it's full of Antifa and Hamas supporters. Do you recognize that description of yourself? Yes, that's all I am. I mean, we've got an organization of, just to give an example, third act is 100 ,000 senior Americans, people over the age of 60. As far as I can tell, none of them are terrorists and all of them are precisely what you would expect. I'm going to be on Lexington Green in Massachusetts. a town where I grew up on Saturday for No King's Day, because arguably in 1775, that's where the movement against kings really began.

10:30We'll be there celebrating American history in its most democratic and profound forms, the place on this planet that really gave rise to the idea that people were completely capable of governing themselves without monarchs in the way. And I think that that'll be true across America. I think that the depictions that Mike Johnson and the Trump administration are putting out will serve only to make it all the clearer to people how ridiculous their view of America at this point really is. Bill, if you type in protest march and inflatable frog suits, you get directed to some Amazon links. And I want you to explain to us why this is taking off, because it is both hilarious and kind of really serious, actually.

11:23We have this idea, especially in America, that protest should always be solemn and dignified. I think that's because, rightly, of the role that Martin Luther King played in our history. And that was the note above all that he struck. But it's not the only note that protesters use. three weeks ago in Portland, after the president said that it was a war-ravaged city that needed federal troops, a local fellow named Seth Todd showed up at the ICE office, the small protest outside it, in an inflatable frog costume. He's since been joined by other frogs, by dinosaurs, by moose, by a wide variety of woodland animals, all making the point that, of course, this is absurd.

12:10Portland's one of the safest places in the country. It's a city devoted to whimsy and food trucks, not to violent terrorism. We're in a very strange moment in the U.S. Out of, sort of out of nowhere, a completely different regime has arisen, one that we're not used to, one that doesn't play by any of the rules that American politics has gone by for my entire lifetime. And so figuring out how to respond to that is difficult but important. And good humor is definitely one way and another is calling on the deepest and most noble traditions of American history. These are all ways to make it clear just on what a series of absurd lies the Trump regime is built right now.

13:03That response is critical this time at a time like this, Bill, I guess, because as we've heard from the Illinois governor, J.B. Pritzker, recently, it cannot end in violence. I mean, any suggestion that this is turning into the kind of marches of 68 or that sense that it would hark back to a time when there was public unrest, there was rioting, there was violence, would actually play straight into the hands of a president who does believe there's a domestic terror network out to get America, right? I don't think he actually believes that. I think he's smart enough to know it's all nonsense, but it's the card that he's been playing.

13:43And so you're right, it would be counterproductive for people to respond violently, though completely understandable given the level of violence that's being exerted on Americans right now. I mean, we have squadrons of masked secret policemen shoving people into the back of SUVs and carrying them away. This is unlike anything that's ever happened in this country. And we don't know really whether the most obvious outlet for resistance, our electoral system, still works or not. The Trump administration, The Trump regime is doing what they can to rig our political system. So figuring out how to respond is a work in progress.

14:32But this No Kings thing is a perfect example. What was most beautiful about the first rendition of this last spring, the first No Kings Day, was that many, many, many of these protests were taking place not in big cities but in small towns. many of them in the reddest parts of the country, demonstrating that there is a huge level of discomfort with what's happening in Washington right now. And let me ask you this, because we live in Britain. There are far left groups. There are anarchist groups. I would contend they couldn't organize, to use a very British phrase, a piss up in a brewery. I wonder whether you think the same in America, because Donald Trump paints this thing, Antifa, as this organization with kind of tentacles everywhere.

15:22I lived in America for nearly eight years, came back three years ago, never saw anything of it. Who knows even what Antifa means? I mean, Dwight Eisenhower is about as close to an American anti-fascist that you're sort of likely to get. It's all craziness. These are just normal people who don't like what's happened to our country. Well, you talked about the No Kings March. And obviously, you know, from where we're sitting here, we obviously think that George III was an absolutely splendid fellow. I'm kidding. But in this, there is a serious point here, isn't there? Because it looks like there is this idea of the unitary executive theory that Donald Trump is embodying, whereby you don't have three co-equal branches of government, you have the executive, and he becomes a monarch-type figure, the imperial presidency.

16:12America was born in the fight against kings. I grew up in Lexington, Massachusetts. My summer job for many years was giving tours to the sightseers who would arrive at Lexington Green and telling the story of that first battle against the Redcoats by people who knew that they were going to get slaughtered, but who understood that they were completely capable of governing themselves. 50, 60 years later, and one town over in Concord, Massachusetts, Henry David Thoreau gave us the first essay on civil disobedience and with it a kind of new set of tactics to start exploring so that we didn't need gunfire in order to counter the powerful.

16:58Those are the tools now that we're using in an effort to stand down this idea that once again, we don't know how to govern ourselves, that we need a king to do it for us. So Bill, if people are listening to this in America now. How will you measure success of the march? And if people want to join those protests or the marching, how do they organize? This is the equivalent of what in this country anyway, we call a potluck supper. People have set the date and the time and then everybody's figuring out how to do this in their own place. There will be thousands and thousands and thousands of these protests.

17:34And if you go to nokings.org, you can find the one nearest you. I suspect that Its success will be measured most of all by its geographic spread. There will be people in every corner of America turning out, and they'll be turning out in as large percentage in rural areas as urban ones, if the last demonstrations are any guide. People will be showing their neighbors who they are, that they're not on board with what's happening. And if the polling in this country is any indication, that's a big majority of Americans now who feel that way. Trump's problem is to figure out how to rule America with a minority of Americans behind him.

18:18Unlike other strongmen that we've seen in recent times, he hasn't been enjoying a surge of popularity, just the opposite. in part because in his blundering and narcissism, he's managed to screw up what was a pretty well working economy that he took over. But without that strong base of popular support, he's forced to try and rely on, well, on coercion right from the start. And this is the beginning of the response to that. He's only been in office nine or 10 months, and it takes a while for people to figure out who don't have the experience of standing up to authoritarian governments how to do it.

19:03But this is a promising part of that process. You said that you wouldn't blame people, or at least you could understand if these protests turn violent because there is so much that people feel angry about in the US right now. But presumably you would say, don't let it. Absolutely. I've spent my life working on nonviolence. It's, for me, the most powerful possible tool. Any violence is likely to be caused by agents provocateurs and so on. But just to underscore, we're watching daily scenes of real brutality, of people ripped from their families, beaten, tossed into unmarked cars by masked men and driven away.

19:46One understands why the level of tension is as high as it is, which makes it all the more beautiful that people's response has tended towards the inflatable frog. I hope you've got your inflatable frog suit for the weekend. I've got my tricorn hat. And I will, as I did in my youth, tell once more the story of the brave yeoman of Lexington standing up to the, in this case, British king. But now we have a king in Washington. who needs us to take his measure too. Thank you so much for joining us. Bill McKibben, that was great to talk to you. Thank you so much.

20:36The News Agents USA. So earlier this week, reporting from Politico discovered a trove of telegram messages. In other words, you know, social media site that you can't easily intercept, which had young Republicans, including state group leaders and at least one staffer from the Trump administration. And it was essentially a group chat which showed in all its glory racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic and Nazi adjacent contact. jokes about gas chambers, jokes about slavery, jokes about rape. Now, this was how the vice president, J.D. Vance, responded to that story. By focusing on what kids are saying in a group chat, grow up.

21:26I'm sorry, focus on the real issues. Don't focus on what kids say in group chats. But there's another angle to this that I just have to be honest about. I'm like an old guy at this When I'm 41 years old, I have three kids. You know, I grew up in a different world, right, where most of the stupid things that I did when I was a teenager and a young adult, they're not on the Internet. Like, I'm going to tell my kids, especially my boys, don't put things on the Internet. Like, be careful with what you post. If you put something in a group chat, assume that some scumbag is going to leak it in an effort to try to cause you harm or cause your family harm.

22:00But the reality is that kids do stupid things, especially young boys. They tell edgy, offensive jokes like that's what kids do. And I really don't want us to grow up in a country where a kid telling a stupid joke, telling a very offensive, stupid joke is caused to ruin their lives. And at some point, we're all going to have to say enough of this B.S. We're not going to allow the worst moment and a 21 year old group chat to ruin a kid's life for the rest of time. That's just not OK. Like we live in it. OK, so that's where you get it. Kids doing stupid things is inarguable. But then he lets slip that these kids are actually in their 20s.

22:42That one is the vice chair of the Young Republicans from Kansas, that the other is the vice chair of the New York State Young Republicans. There are people who have actual leadership roles within the Republican Party that think this stuff is OK. You know, one kid, Peter Junter, who at the time was chair of the same organisation, writing, everyone that votes no is going to the gas chamber. you can decide what they believe but it is in a way more extraordinary that the vice president of the united states doesn't seem to have a problem with this he doesn't seem to have a problem with any of the language instead of saying oh my god they've really you know stepped out of line here this needs to be really clear and really corrected he's kind of going oh well what do you You know, kids.

23:36Emily, it's worse than that. He says that the person who will leak this is the scumbag. Yeah, yeah. Well, is it a scumbag to talk about young Republicans in leadership positions calling basketball monkey play ball? Because presumably because it's so many black players in the NBA that it's monkey play ball, calling them watermelon people. You know, that is the disgusting stuff. The scumbag who brings it to attention is doing us a favour by saying that these attitudes are languishing in private group chats in a way that should be called out because they're absolutely morally reprehensible. And as you say, joking about rape, because that's a really good subject to make jokes about and joking about being raped and then committing suicide.

24:24That's also cool. And gas chambers and putting people in gas chambers. That's a really funny joke. No, I don't understand why J.D. Vance, who seems to have and proclaim this moral compass attached to his Catholicism, can't see what is wrong here. And just to excuse it as exuberance of young people, I'm afraid doesn't cut it. Are you surprised by the stuff in the group chat? I'm horrified by the stuff in the group chat. I mean, look, I'm not actually I've got to a point where I wasn't remotely surprised to hear that young men in their 20s on, I would say extreme right at the party, but I don't really know what that is anymore.

25:06Who are using this kind of language because everything has been normalized. Everything is now OK. There are no limits, actually. And I understand that they're big on free speech, except obviously if you want to just go about your business on campus or whatever. But I understand now that America is in a place where no one will be castigated for anything that they say. I just think that if you are, you would hope, let me put it like this, and maybe that's naive of me to have hope. I would hope that people who are rising up the political tree in the Republican Party would be smarter than that to think it is OK.

25:50why to talk about people in such derogatory terms in terms that are just so offensive but they think that they can get away with it because they think it's on a telegram chat and it's encrypted and that they'll be safe and that they can say what the hell they like i would hope that people would be a little bit wiser than that but obviously i am deluded look there is one other aspect to this and the Charlie Kirk murder was horrific. And there were some appalling things posted by people who, again, I would argue should have known better. They were offensive. They were rude. They disrespected the family of Kirk when the family is grieving over his loss.

26:33And J.D. Vance then was saying, you should ring up these people's employers and get them fired. They weren't kids. They weren't kids. They were knowing. but the young republicans who are in leadership positions they're kids come on the hypocrisy of this stinks J.D. Vance where you define free speech just seems to be entirely whose mouth it is coming out of there is no principle to this of course the one person who who did invoke the spirit of Hitler in recent comments was J.D. Vance himself in those good old days you know what eight years ago where he used to compare Trump to Hitler and then suddenly realised that wasn't going to be the clearest path to power.

27:22Yeah, that wasn't going to be career enhancing for him. Interestingly, I mean, look, J.D. Vance has been on a journey and become radicalised. Some of the people that you think of as being the most radically pro-MAGA seem to be just edging slightly in a saner direction. And we'll be talking about them in just a moment.

27:51The newsagents USA. The immigration thing, the way it looks is horrific. It looks, when you're just arresting people in front of their kids and just normal, regular people that have been here for 20 years, that, everybody who has a heart can't get along with that. No. Everybody who has a heart sees that and goes, that can't be right. They can't be right that can't be the only way to do this right because you have to think look Yeah, we have to have a border. Yes. It should have been secure. Yes They should make sure you know who everybody is before they get in yeah, but when people been here for 20 years Like come on come on that's crazy Yeah, let's find a way if they've been productive members of society for 20 years no criminal record They work the entire time they paid taxes find them a pathway to citizenship.

28:42Find a way where you can do this thing that you want to do, which is keep terrorists and cartel members from getting across the border with drugs that kill 100 ,000 people a year. Okay, but also have a fucking heart. That is none other than Joe Rogan. And the Joe Rogan podcast was one of the voices in the 2024 election that was so supportive of Donald Trump. Donald Trump loved Joe Rogan. Joe Rogan seemed to love Donald Trump. But now there seems to be a reckoning on Joe Rogan's part about the way the whole immigration, deportation, ICE thing is unfolding in America. And that kind of cry, have a heart.

29:27I think that he speaks for an awful lot of MAGA when they're watching the ICE snatch squads on the streets. Yeah, I mean, we talked last week about Theo Vaughan, who's another of the podcast bros, another one who is credited with being incredibly influential, particularly on the votes of young men during the 2024 election. And something is shifting at the moment. And I think we have to be careful that we're not kind of saying, oh, my God, Trump's going to lose the midterms or this is all going to come back to bite him or whatever. But it is a very tangible sense of distaste, maybe disgust, actually, with what is unfolding in America now.

30:11And it's down to some of the podcasters now to call it out. I mean, you could say that the Democrats have been doing it as loudly as they can for months, but as loudly as they can is often not that loud. Whereas when the podcasters do it and they have millions of downloads every week, then it tends to actually hit where it hurts. The other person that we've been keeping an eye on, and funny enough, some of you were asking me about this on social media over the last few days, is Marjorie Taylor Greene. Now, I think my own encounter with R. Marge is quite well documented. She is a woman who has espoused conspiracy theories quite happily, not least about...