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On Nov. 4, 2024, a free and fair election was held in the United States to determine who would be the 47th president. One candidate, Donald Trump, went through a presidential primary, vanquishing two relatively formidable opponents (Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley) before taking on two Democratic nominees in the general election (Joe Biden, then Kamala Harris).
The reason, of course, that Kamala was the nominee was because party powerbrokers, including former president Barack Obama, the Clintons, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and actor George Clooney, pushed a sitting president after his disastrous debate performance.
That decision ended up being an easy one for the powers-that-be on the Democratic side. The Biden-Harris campaign had raised more than $350 million to that point, and with that money being nontransferable to another candidate not named Biden or Harris, only Kamala could be installed as the nominee.
Installed is the key word. Democrats could have opted for what was dubbed a “lightning primary” to give voters a say. But money talks.
If this sounds downright Soviet to you, it should. It was Biden who earned almost all primary votes. He wanted no part of stepping down, which would damage his legacy almost as much as his failed presidency.
But winning was the only thing that mattered. Trump had to be defeated at all costs, even if that meant depriving Democratic voters, once again, of a fair primary process.
In 2016, WikiLeaks emails revealed the Democratic National Committee, led by Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), put a thumb on the scale for Hillary Clinton and did what was necessary to ensure that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), a Democratic socialist, would not be the nominee.
In 2020, Biden finished a distant fourth and fifth in the first two primary states of Iowa and New Hampshire, respectively. But magically, almost every major candidate outside of Bernie and Elizabeth Warren decided to drop out of the race before Super Tuesday, clearing a path for Biden to win 10 states and cruise to the nomination.
Let’s just say democracy was not on display when it came to Democrats choosing a nominee. It was more like a WWE match: a fixed fight with a predetermined outcome.
In 2024, Trump headed back to the Oval Office by winning every swing state and the popular vote. That doesn’t make Trump a king. It makes him a U.S. president duly elected twice.
Where were all the No Kings protests following any of those Democratic primaries over the past decade? Where was the outrage?
Minneapolis was ground zero for No Kings last weekend because its leaders are vehemently opposed to ICE. Leading that charge was former vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, who, despite a massive fraud scandal involving members of the Somali community to the tune of billions, pledged his allegiance to the Somali community.
“A special thank you and a special acknowledgment that we will never leave the side of our Somali Minnesotans,” he told a cheering No Kings crowd. “Here’s our pledge to you, our Somali Minnesotans. Your great-grandchildren will still be here when that Orange clown is in the dustbin of history. You will be here!”
Amazingly, this person was a few swing states away from becoming vice president.
But if Walz is insisting that Trump is a king, what does that make him? This is the same governor who, more than anyone not named Gavin Newsom, shut down his state during the COVID-19 pandemic, even introducing a hotline encouraging neighbors to snitch on each other if any of the governor’s draconian stay-at-home COVID rules were broken. Very king-like, no?
Meanwhile, in Times Square on Saturday, a large group of No Kings protesters waved communist hammer-and-sickle red flags while chanting, “There is only one solution, COMMUNIST REVOLUTION!”
Not to be outdone, the aforementioned Pelosi said that No Kings protests are essential for saving democracy, while adding that the Founding Fathers “did not want a king.”
At last check, we don’t have a king. But we do have Pelosi outright saying on national television this week that Republicans may attempt to change votes through hacking in the upcoming midterm elections. And of course, she didn’t offer one hint of evidence to back up this claim.
“We have to be on guard as to what they may try to do to the technology,” she told MS Now with zero pushback. “They may try to creep into the technology and create a false count. How do you guard against that?”
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It used to be that accusing the other side of election cheating was considered dangerous rhetoric to the republic. But Pelosi’s comment, predictably, was ignored by legacy media.
In the end, No Kings was a classic case of sound and fury signifying nothing. The First Amendment has never been more alive and well. Ironically enough, the protests that continue completely unabated prove it.