(Dobbs) I Was Marching With Tens Of Thousands Of Terrorists

It won't change the world overnight, but this movement isn't going away.

Yesterday was my first protest march— two, actually— and it was worth marching.

First, because it felt good to be surrounded by citizens of like mind, namely— and many signs that I photographed spelled it out— the clear conviction that while Donald Trump acts like a king, enabled by a court of jesters, there is no place for a king, or a royal court, in our constitutional republic.

And second, because everyone at my marches, everyone at each of the estimated 2,500 marches across the country, was exercising our rights, rights explicit in the very Constitution that Donald Trump thinks he can trash. My older son spelled that out yesterday in a post on Facebook: “If you selectively choose which parts of the Constitution to ignore for the benefit of sects you prefer, then you don’t believe in America. We who do say ‘No Kings in America!’”

In the short term, maybe Trump can pick and choose. In the long term, whether from the courts, the voters, or the historians, somehow he will answer for it.

So will the whole Trump regime. Like Speaker Mike Johnson, who contemptibly called these No Kings demonstrations “Hate America rallies.” Sorry Mr. Speaker, I don’t think so.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the people marching would be the “most unhinged in the Democratic Party.” The Senate majority whip, Minnesota’s Tom Emmer, called them the party’s “pro-terrorist wing.” Kansas Senator Roger Marshall talked about “paid protesters” and “agitators.”

My son said something on Facebook about that too: “These protesters nationwide are stopping well short of storming the Capitol, threatening hangings, indeed causing loss of life in their violent disregard for law, seeking to overturn democratic results, and then CONTINUING to throw a tantrum for four years.”

Trump’s toadying White House mouthpiece Karoline Leavitt took the tantrum to a whole new level. “The Democrat Party’s main constituency,” she said, “are made up of Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens, and violent criminals.”

Really?!? Are these the ones she’s talking about because if they are, I was marching with tens of thousands of terrorists.

When it comes to making up stories out of whole cloth, which is a hallmark of this repulsive regime, Attorney General Pam Bondi told Fox News, “You’re seeing people with thousands of signs that all match… someone is funding it, we are going to get to the root of antifa and we’re going to find and charge all of those people who are causing this chaos.”

Wrong again, Ms. Bondi. Yes, there was a handful of professionally printed signs…

But of the thousands I saw in almost four miles of marching in two different demonstrations, probably 99% were homemade.

As for Bondi charging “all of those people who are causing this chaos,” what chaos? I’ve read a dozen reports from marches around the country and the only conflict I found was in a CNN report from Marietta, Georgia, where video shows a man, pretty obviously pro-Trump, pulling up to the demonstration in a truck, grabbing an anti-Trump protester’s flag, and racing off.

Maybe the funniest sign I saw, which I didn’t get to photograph, simply said, “If Kamala had won, we’d all be home having brunch.” But the one that I think best expressed the exasperation of marchers was, admittedly, profane, but in seven words said it all.

Apologies if you object to the F-word in a public place (or a Substack column) but if you do, we only have our coarse commander-in-chief to thank. Friday in the Oval Office, Trump talked about reports that Venezuela’s President Maduro might want to take down tensions between the two countries and said, when asked why, “Because he doesn’t want to fuck around with the United States.”

At the end of our protest, one of the friends with whom I marched asked, “But is it really going to make a difference?” To the Trump regime, no. They’ll keep spinning their lies and spurning the Constitution. But to us? Yes, absolutely. We were in a sea of real patriots. We were demonstrating that we believe in the rights the regime would take away. We were speaking truth to power.

It won’t change the world overnight, but as with nationwide demonstrations in decades past, if enough politicians get the message that this movement isn’t going away, it might move us in the right direction.

Power doesn’t last forever. Truth does.

Over more than five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He also co-authored a book about the seminal year for baby boomers, called “1969: Are You Still Listening?” He has covered presidencies, politics, and the U.S. space program at home, and wars, natural disasters, and other crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and as a 39-year resident of Colorado, a place in the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame.

You can learn more at GregDobbs.net