Nine Million People Showed Up and the White House Called It Therapy

You want to know what eight or nine million people looks like?

I’ll tell you. That’s every man, woman, and child in the state of Virginia. That’s more people than live in the whole of Switzerland. That’s — and I want you to really hold this — the largest single-day protest in the history of this country. Maybe ever.

They showed up in all fifty states. Thirty-two hundred events. Little towns and big cities, cold weather and warm, folks who drove two hours and folks who walked out their front door. They held signs that said “No Kings.” Simple. Plain. The kind of message you don’t need a college education to understand.

And do you know what the White House called it?

“Trump Derangement Therapy Sessions.”

I have to hand it to whoever typed that up, because it takes a particular kind of nerve to look at nine million of your own countrymen standing in the street and diagnose them with a mental condition. That’s not a press secretary. That’s a man at the end of the bar telling you the whole bar is wrong.

Here’s what I know about this part of the country: people don’t just up and leave the house on a Saturday for nothing. They got things to do. Kids to haul somewhere, fences that need mending, groceries to buy. When a person puts all that down and drives somewhere to stand in public with a sign, they mean it. They really mean it.

Nine million people meant it.

I don’t know what that adds up to in November math. But I know what a full house looks like, and I know what an empty excuse sounds like.

You take your time finishing up. No rush.

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Sweetpea Diner, Somewhere in West Texas — Counter seats still available. For now.