House Speaker Mike Johnson and Republican leadership spent this week passionately urging millions of Americans to please, for the love of God, not exercise their constitutionally protected freedom of speech this Saturday during the nationwide "No Kings" protests, which Johnson has helpfully rebranded as "the Hate America Rally."
The GOP leadership has unified around calling the protests—organized by groups including the American Civil Liberties Union, American Federation of Teachers, and Human Rights Campaign—a "hate America rally," with Johnson predicting attendees will include "pro-Hamas supporters," "the Antifa crowd," and "the Marxists."
The protests, explicitly organized around the message "In America, we don't do kings" and promoting the radical notion that "power resides with the people, not with a singular authority," have apparently struck Republicans as deeply unpatriotic, possibly because opposing monarchy is so un-American.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise doubled down on the messaging, explaining that Democrats kept the government shut down "to show all those people that are going to come here and express their hatred towards this country," clarifying that expressing concern about authoritarian overreach is actually just hatred for the nation that literally fought a war to reject having a king.
Senator Roger Marshall suggested the National Guard might need to respond to the protesters, because nothing says "land of the free" quite like potentially deploying military forces against citizens peacefully asserting that America is a democracy.
Reports from June's first No Kings protests described "veterans, federal employees, and mostly older, liberal white people who love America," which Republicans have determined is actually a terrorist organization in disguise.
The October 18 event is expected to draw millions of Americans to over 2,500 rallies and marches across all 50 states, all of whom Republicans are confident must hate the country whose founding document enshrines their right to gather and protest.
