When a House Speaker calls peaceful protesting un-American and hateful, you know the democracy alarms are blaring. But this time, Bernie Sanders wasn’t about to let it slide.
As the No Kings protests (a.k.a the No Dictators or No Tyrants protests) prepare to sweep across U.S. cities on Oct. 18, rebuking Donald Trump‘s creeping authoritarianism and the broader decay of democratic norms, Speaker Mike Johnson chose to smear them as a “hate America” rally. The Louisiana Republican, a loyal Trump ally and culture-war mainstay, told reporters on day ten of the ongoing government shutdown that the protests are “outrageous”:
