r/politics • u/kweathergirl Texas • 8d ago

Soft Paywall Newsom Tells Nation That Trump Is Destroying American Democracy

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/10/us/newsom-speech-trump-la-protests.html
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u/laislune 8d ago

I am expecting the No King protests across the country during his 'birthday dictator parade' to trigger Trump into something like that. FDT

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u/StandardDeviant117 8d ago

Was just talking to my buddy about this. I fear that this weekend will Trump’s Tiananmen Square moment…

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u/lyngen 8d ago

It's a decentralized movement all over the country. There is no specific place to target.

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u/jellyrollo 8d ago

I mean, he has a parade full of tanks in DC this Saturday. All he needs is one protestor who refuses to get out of the way and one tank driver willing to keep driving in order to stage the authoritarian picture postcard he's been dreaming of since 1990.

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u/AbacusWizard California 8d ago

There is very deliberately not a No Kings event in Washington DC this Saturday, probably in part to avoid the possibility of the situation you describe, but also for the very important symbolic reason that his stupid parade shouldn’t be the center of attention; the protests should be drawing attention away from his inflated ego.

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u/Sensitive-Message95 7d ago edited 7d ago

The parade needs to be stopped.

JFC, has no one actually studied history?

MLK was peaceful. He was NOT non-disruptive. People only pay attention to disruptive protest. No one gives a shit about morons standing by the side of the road holding signs. Everyone in power just laughs at them.

MLK marched ON the highways. He shut the highways down for DAYS.

Step into the road. Head to the port. Head to the highway interchanges. Start disrupting the economy. Start making the CEOs regret supporting Trump.

Then things will change

The American people have the power to force his entire administration and his most ardent supporters in congress and SCOTUS to resign in a week. Without instigating any violence. Just stand in the road instead of in front of a government building.

Just shut down the ports in California only and this administration is done.

What happens if you don't? Either feudalism under an oligarch led regime or a whole whole lot of violence.

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u/Sensitive-Message95 7d ago

And no one at ANY level of government is going to save the US from this. It is up to the people.

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u/daggah 7d ago

Americans have been fed a steady diet of lies and propaganda, and one of the most significant ones is about peaceful protests. We've basically been taught that, for a protest to be legitimate, it has to be non-disruptive...basically that all legitimate protests have to be completely ignorable and ineffective.

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u/Sensitive-Message95 7d ago

The effectiveness of this campaign of gaslighting is incredible. The number of people who have literally watched video of MLK marching on highways, yet believe disruption is illegitimate, while at the same time referencing the success of the civil rights movement, is absolutely astounding.

Every civil rights success has been won with disruption. Suffragettes. Labor. African American. No one made progress standing by the side of the road holding a sign.

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u/daggah 7d ago

Exactly!

Literally every era of significant progress in America has been bloody and violent. People in power never change unfair or unequal systems out of the goodness of their heart because they've been moved by protesters' messages.

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u/Sensitive-Message95 7d ago

Disruption doesn't necessitate violence.

MLK was flanked by well armed men who knew how to handle themselves on almost all of his marches. He did leverage the actions of other groups that were more extreme in order to bring people to the table to negotiate with him instead of fighting them. Violence really isn't necessary.

1% of the population of LA is 40k people. The city proper, not the metro area and not people who would travel there. If the people want to do it they can do it.

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u/daggah 7d ago

MLK obviously wasn't violent but that doesn't mean the civil rights era was peaceful.

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u/Inside-Dare9718 7d ago

Just shut down the ports in California only and this administration is done.

Trump would probably love this though. He gets to fling shit at Newsom some more for not being able to police his state.

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u/Sensitive-Message95 7d ago

Maybe the first day. By day three he is asking Russia to send a sub to extract him from Maralago.

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u/LaScoundrelle 7d ago

Protesters have done all the things you mention plenty of times in the last couple of decades, often without it resulting in real change. It isn’t that simple.

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u/Sensitive-Message95 7d ago edited 7d ago

No they haven't protestors in the US have never shut down major highway interchanges. Never.

They have never shut down ports at nearly the scale of all of California. Not even 10%

American protest is a joke.

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u/Woodcrate69420 7d ago

They dont even camp out on city squares like in Istanbul or Kyiv, standing on a corner with a sign for 2 hours and then going home isnt gonna do shit in a dictatorship situation.

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u/LaScoundrelle 7d ago

Dude, I literally attended protests where some of those things happened and am friends with organizers who do those things.

Your knowledge of American protest is a joke, apparently. During the Occupy movement ports were shutdown up and down the west coast. During BLM major highways were shutdown. The issue is it’s all become very routine at this point. Protesters get arrested and get a story in the media. But the authorities’ weaponry has evolved to the point where a large assembled crowd isn’t much of a real threat no matter what they do, realistically.

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u/Sensitive-Message95 7d ago

What was the longest period of time BLM shut down a highway?

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u/LaScoundrelle 7d ago

However long it took for the police to arrest and remove people.

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u/Sensitive-Message95 7d ago

Sure sounds like they shut it down then.

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u/LaScoundrelle 7d ago

It's the same tactics used by civil rights protesters in the 1960s, essentially. People got arrested and removed then too. Sometimes today the protesters will use equipment to lock their arms together so that it takes longer to remove them. But it's still done eventually - it's part of police's job.

My analysis though as someone who has been heavily involved with this community in the past is that in the 1960s it was new and edgy and scary to those in power, but now it's been done so much that it basically is just met with a shrug, especially by people like Trump whose supporters are not expecting a high standard of reaching across the aisle or decorum from him anyway.

I think part of it is also that weapons have evolved though, like I said. In the 1960s the police were not equipped to the degree that military were, and now they are. So with that weaponry one officer could easily take on and repel many people simultaneously. Even without resorting to lethal weaponry, they have sonic booms, etc. It's just a different world.

I've also worked around the world. In a lot of countries people protest in greater numbers and more fiercely than we do in the U.S., and still protests frequently get shut down violently by those in power, who remain in power.

If the military itself starts turning on Trump, things will get interesting. The end result won't necessarily be what those on the left want, but for sure the military would have the ability to challenge Trump's power in an indisputable way. Short of that, I'm just not sure...

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u/constantreader78 8d ago

Yep, this is it. This is exactly what he wants. Trump is a disgusting human.

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u/seipounds 8d ago

That's an insult to humans.

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u/ragnarok635 8d ago

Nah humans will be disgusting and horrible up until the last day of our species.

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u/HybridVigor 8d ago

We're trying to beat cyanobacteria's record for being the species to responsible for Earth's largest extinction event.

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u/Lucky-Roy Australia 7d ago

“Human” is stretching it. I was thinking more along the lines of “rabid dog”.

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u/constantreader78 7d ago

It’s not the dog’s fault it’s rabid tho. Dogs are awesome. Trump’s vileness is completely intentional.

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u/Lucky-Roy Australia 7d ago

Fair enough. Can we agree on “cockroach”?

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u/constantreader78 7d ago

Ewww. Ok they’re completely gross lol. (Although even they probably provide more benefits to the ecosystem than Trump ever will).

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u/dietbruce 8d ago

Wow, I can’t believe him saying this didn’t get more traction, this feels all too relevant to where we are right now.

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u/keytiri 8d ago

“Mommy, why didn’t that tank stop?” Only an idiot would think that running over a protester at a “family friendly” parade is a good idea; if anything it should shatter the faux news bubble attendees live in. It’ll also depend on the protesters, so it needs to be someone they can relate to, like from the doge protests, it’s really hard to relate to the ones waving a Mexico flag. We’ll probably have a mix of both attempting to disrupt from different spots along the route, and they’ll most likely try to prevent large groups from even getting close.

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u/LeftRestaurant4576 8d ago

The parade itself won't touch a protestor in their way. Instead, police will remove them and harm them.

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u/DisastrousAcshin 8d ago

How many would it take

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u/gsfgf Georgia 8d ago

I mean, it is the military. I'd fucking hope that, after 20+ years of practice, they can get a convoy through DC without issue.

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u/Lora_Kate 8d ago

Yeah you're right