No Kings has come and gone and was, thankfully, a peaceful protest of mostly white retirees. The Boomers are ever in need of their Selma. What struck me most is that while there was diversity of sex and race and ethnicity, the crowds were everywhere still mostly older white people. These people's fathers stormed the beaches of Normandy and fought the actual Nazis, then came home and started families, then joined together in the Civl Rights movement while their kids were partying in high school. Now the kids need their moment to be like dad. They had a summer of love. They want a summer of mattering. They have no bridges to cross in Selma. So they show up with silly signs and dumb chants for pretty much anything. Now, it is to protest that the democratically elected President of the United States and the democratically elected Republican controlled Congress that empowers him are allowing that elected President to behave like a king, and the only thing to stop him are, ironically, life-tenured unelected judges who are kings in their courtrooms and boomers marching in the street with their grandkids. Their alternative is actually worse — a progressive brigade of socialists who'd take away the local choices of communities for a technocratically operated Washington demanding everyone everywhere comply with their demands from the cars you can drive to the food you can eat to the fuel you can use to power your stove, all while compromising your daughters' safety in her sports and bathrooms. They're even normalizing Nick Fuentes, the white supremacist now, or at least The Drudge Report is. Fuentes was radioactive, but now he is publicly claiming there's something wrong with Trump. So whoever runs the Drudge Report is happily sending Fuentes traffic. Politics makes strange bedfellows. Undoubtedly there are those there who really are concerned with the President, his behavior, and those around him who flout norms, blow up speed boats in the southern Caribbean, and say the F-word during presidential Q&A's with reporters, among other things, but too many of them are just upset their side lost and have decided to cosplay as Civil Rights crusades with too few bridges to cross. One of the very great ironies of those who funded and organized the "No Kings" movement is how so many of them also supported the effort to tear down statutes of our founding fathers, have vilified this country as founded on racism and support of slavery, and want us to be very much more European where kings and queens and dilettante pretenders to thrones still roam. Word came over the weekend that the President might start walking back some of his tariffs because of the impact they are starting to have on consumers. Automakers are signaling they can no longer keep absorbing costs. Small businesses in a CNBC survey say they have frozen hirings and pay raises. And grocery prices have started to go back up as we reach the season where we start importing more agricultural products. Even beef, through drought, processing problems, and 75% tariffs on key countries that import beef, is starting to go up. The President's team is listening to those who suggest these tariffs, directly impacting consumers, could help Democrats. I keep telling Republicans that their present economic policies are not good for consumers. The growth of the economy is actually very anemic when you take out data centers and the AI that those centers are related to. Small businesses actually are struggling right now. Tariffs are playing a big role. Here's one key fact — if you take out AI and data center investments, the economy of the United States only grew by one-tenth of one percent for the first half of 2016. We've got a Potemkin village of an economy right now, and the GOP risks the wrath of voters if the buildings collapse. When Nvidia invests $100 million into OpenAI, which then buys $100 million in chips from Nvidia or buys AMD stock to publicly announce it so the stock goes up, then using that stock growth to fund chip purchases, something is really wrong with the economy. When so many private equity groups are pushing individual investors to invest in new products via 401(K) funds, etc., that are dubious, we have problems. They are not Donald Trump's problems or fault, but will become his if things go south. He, after all, is President and, fairly or not, the presidents all get blamed. Blame will come, regardless, from MSNBC. Hilariously, over the weekend, progressives on social media showed MSNBC aerial footage of a massive crowd formed at a "No Kings" rally. But it was from Trump's first term, not this term. MSNBC, of course, is a secret weapon for the GOP. On Saturday, Senators Bernie Sanders and Chris Murphy stood on a D.C. rally stage with a political activist who has previously and repeatedly chanted "F— America," called for violence against Jews, cheered on and defended cop killers, and regretted that Trump was not killed in the assassination attempt. When Donald Trump met with Nick Fuentes, I and a large number of conservatives very vocally criticized the meeting. MSNBC and CNN gave it lots of airtime. Neither network thought it was relevant that the No Kings protests were turning the stage over to an activist who seeks to end the United States or who supports cop killers. And now Drudge is sending traffic to Fuentes. The new right is, I think, far too willing now to hang out with unsavory characters and bring them into the movement, in large part because the Left has long done that. Obama got his political start in the living room of a terrorist and fraternized with Jeremiah Wright. The media gave him a pass, so parts of Trump's coalition think they should do the same. Except, at the upper levels of the White House and the GOP, they understand that the major media would give wall-to-wall coverage of Trump hanging out with unsavory characters. The same press, however, excuses the left's excesses, which fosters even more excess. The American people no longer just rely on the press corps for their news. So the people understand the Democrats' New York mayoral candidate socializing with an unindicted co-conspirator of the first World Trade Center bombing raises red flags even as MSNBC ignores it. The American people understand normalizing those who champion cop killers is a bad thing. But the progressives, in their bubble, are not called to account by MSNBC and rarely by CNN, so they keep fraternizing with America haters. That, in part, is why the No Kings protests will do little to shift American opinion. As much as the public does not like Trump, they really hate the Democrats. The dislike of Trump is unlikely to drive Americans towards a group they hate even more. But that group does not realize how much Americans loathe them because the news media is incapable of making their own team account for their sins. Boomers can have their Selma moment. The GOP needs to pay careful attention to the economy. But let's not pretend some political wave is being shaped by the cosplaying progressive grandparents. Most Americans this weekend were more interested in football and their grill than turning out to pretend they were doing something meaningful. Personal note: This has been a bit of a challenging weekend. I'll be on air today for most of the show, but the last hour will be best of as I tend to the family. My wife was admitted to the hospital on Friday and is still there. My son is down for the count with both a virus and a sinus infection. I'm on Doctor Husband/Dad duty. Prayers are especially appreciated for my wife. She is battling Rhabdomyolysis. Her cancer scans were supposed to be tomorrow, but they'll be put off now. You're a free subscriber to Erick Erickson's Show Notes. For the full experience, become a paying subscriber.
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Monday, October 20, 2025
Boomer Selma and the GOP’s Secret Weapon - checking in with EE
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