Three thousand 'No Kings' rallies happen across the country in a single Saturday.

OK. Pull up a stool. Saturday afternoon. The No Kings coalition, which is a coalition of progressive activists that has been organizing since April 2025, held three thousand events across the United States in a single Saturday. That is three thousand, hon. Not three. Three thousand. The previous No Kings Saturday, in October, held two thousand five hundred.

The crowds, hon, were visible. In Los Angeles, on Wilshire Boulevard, the aerial footage from KCAL showed a crowd the station’s helicopter pilot, on the air, called the largest single demonstration I have flown over since the 2017 women’s march. In Manhattan, on Fifth Avenue, the NYPD’s own crowd estimate, through the precinct CO, was over one hundred thousand. In Portland, Oregon, in Pioneer Courthouse Square, the Oregonian counted roughly fifteen thousand, in a square that holds twenty. In Boston, on the Common, the Globe counted about thirty. In Chicago, on State Street, the Tribune, in a piece that did not lead with the crowd size, still led with the crowd size. In San Francisco, on Market Street, the Chronicle used the word throng.

I want you to pause, hon, on the word throng. Throng is the word the Chronicle uses exactly twice a decade. On Saturday, it used it.

The President of the United States, hon, on Saturday afternoon, on his social media platform, posted that the protests were small, paid, staged, and the work of left-wing extremists. He said, quote, nobody actually shows up. He said, quote, George Soros pays them. He said, quote, the photos are AI-generated.

Hon. The photos are not AI-generated. The photos are aerial footage. The aerial footage is from local news helicopters. The local news helicopters, hon, are not part of the Soros network. The local news helicopters are owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, by Hearst, by Tegna, and by Cox. These are, hon, not progressive organizations. These are standard regional broadcasters with one helicopter each and a contract with the local PD for traffic coverage. The helicopters were, on Saturday, doing traffic coverage and the traffic coverage was the throng.

The President’s claim that the photos are AI-generated, hon, is the kind of claim you make when you do not want to engage with the actual photos. The actual photos, hon, are real. The real photos, hon, are the kind of thing that changes how the next news cycle is framed. The next news cycle, by Sunday morning, was framed around the size of the crowd.

In Atlanta, hon, on Peachtree, the crowd was fifty thousand. I want you to picture fifty thousand people on one street in one Southern city on one Saturday, on the forty-second day of an agency shutdown, on the thirty-third day of a war, with gas at four eighty-one a gallon, and the President of the United States on his social media platform saying nobody showed up. I want you to picture, hon, what those fifty thousand people would say if you handed them a microphone and asked them one question: what brought you here today? The answer, on every microphone in every city, was some version of the war, the shutdown, and the price of gas.

Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the Shah of Iran, on the same Saturday, at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Texas, told the audience, quote, I intend to make Iran great again. That, hon, is the kind of line that plays well at CPAC and very badly on the No Kings signs in Pioneer Courthouse Square. They are not the same audience, hon. They are not the same week. They are both, hon, on the same Saturday.

Funny how that works.