Washington Post denounces the GOP's "hyperbolic" reaction to "No Kings" marches

Sees no hyperbole in the over-the-top name of these marches

George Will identifies the new print media business model under which newspapers no longer make their money from advertisers, but instead from subscribers who pay to have their frustrations and irritations amplified in print. Readers now “value the newspapers’ attitudes toward events, not the news that readers already know about events.” The job of newspapers is “to justify the readers’ agenda and inculcate it in others who will become donors” to newspapers by subscribing.

This frontpage article in yesterday’s Washington Post could serve as Exhibit A in support of Will’s thesis (which comes from Andrey Mir and his book Postjournalism and the Death of Newspapers). The Post’s piece is an attack on Republicans for their attempt to “rebrand” the “No Kings” marches:

Ahead of thousands of anti-authoritarian “No Kings” protests planned for Saturday across the United States, Republicans are trying to brand the demonstrations as “hate America” rallies, ramping up their rhetoric about the millions of people expected to peacefully protest President Donald Trump and his administration’s policies as they did in June.

For more than a week, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) and other GOP leaders have cast the “No Kings” rallies as un-American, using increasingly hyperbolic language. Johnson and other members of House GOP leadership, including Majority Leader Steve Scalise (Louisiana), Majority Whip Tom Emmer (Minnesota), and Republican Conference Chair Lisa C. McClain (Michigan), have all described the protests as events for people who “hate” the country, with Johnson and Emmer going as far as to suggest the protests are meant to appease a “terrorist wing” of the Democratic Party. . . .

Democrats and organizers of the more than 2,600 events scheduled for Saturday have said they’re outraged by this characterization, defending the protests as peaceful and pointing out there were relatively few disruptions at the rallies in June. They also warned of attempts to stifle First Amendment rights. . . .

“If you offer any criticism of this government, then you ‘hate America’? That’s ridiculous, un-American and unpatriotic,” Sen. Chris Murphy said.

This is the Post doing two things. It’s assuring its liberal readers, many of whom were planning to attend the march in D.C. or considering it, that they are good, patriotic people, not anti-Americans. And more importantly, the Post is feeding their view that it’s the Republican leaders who are “un-American and unpatriotic.”

But two things can be true at once. It can be true, and is, that the Post is pandering to a readership on which it depends for subscriptions by attacking various Republican leaders in a frontpage rant. The Post’s readers will be especially delighted to read about the comments in question at a time when the left has been tarred for over-the-top rhetoric in the wake of the Charlie Kirk assassination.

At the same time, it can be true, and is, that the rhetoric from the various GOP leaders is over-the-top. I know the kind of people who participated in this march and those like it. They are my neighbors, friends, and even family members. I see them on the Metro going to and from the marches, and listen to them talk. I have even attended a few of these marches, not as a participant but as a reporter (of sorts).

The vast majority of these people do not hate America. They hate Trump and many of them hate conservatives. But that’s not the same thing as hating America.

Nor is it true that the Democratic Party’s “main constituency is made up of Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens and violent criminals” — a claim that White House Secretary Karoline Leavitt made in a Fox News interview last week. Leavitt is only 28, too young, perhaps for her job, but old enough to know better. I suspect she does.

But there’s a third thing that is also true: The very label of these marches, “No Kings,” is an example of the same kind of “hyperbole” the Post, in pandering to its subscribers, denounces.

Trump is not a King in the sense the protesters mean. Nor is there any danger that he will become one.

If Trump were a King, he wouldn’t be waiting breathlessly for the Supreme Court’s ruling on the lawfulness of his tariff policy. The courts would have no say.

If Trump were a King, the government wouldn’t be shut down. It would be running, and the hyper-costly extension of Obamacare that the Democrats seek to preserve through the shutdown would be over-and-done-with, not the subject of debate and, perhaps, future negotiations.

If Trump were a King, Kilmar Abrego Garcia would still be jailed in El Salvador. He would not have been returned to the U.S. by court order.

Trump certainly has authoritarian tendencies. But that doesn’t make him a King or, for that matter, an authoritarian.

What is Trump? He’s a president pushing the limits of his authority to the edge of what the Constitutions allows, and in some cases beyond, but always subject to the constraining power of the courts (tariffs and Abrego Garcia) and Congress (the shutdown).

It’s amazing that the Post saw no irony in denouncing hyperbole from Republican leaders in a story about their reaction to the hyperbolically-named “No Kings” march. But this blinkered approach is not surprising, given the print-journalism business model George Will describes.