U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson

In the days leading up to the No Kings protests of Saturday, October 18, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) attacked the gatherings as "Hate America rallies" that would be dominated by a combination of Antifa agitators, Hamas supporters, and far-left communists. But the protests, which attracted millions of participants nationwide, were considerably different from what Johnson predicted.

Expressing their opposition to President Donald Trump's policies, the demonstrators ranged from centrist Democrats to democratic socialists to liberals to right-wing Never Trump conservatives and libertarians. Conservative attorney George Conway, a Never Trumper and veteran of the right-wing legal movement, marched in the No Kings protest in Washington, D.C.

The New Republic's Michael Tomasky, in an article published on October 20, argues that Johnson's comments about the protesters show a fundamental lack of understanding about the U.S. population.

Tomasky explains, "It was one thing to distort the intent and nature of these rallies in the run-up to them by saying they were for violent terrorists who despise the United States of America…. But by late afternoon Saturday, the events had happened; the smaller ones like mine finished in the early afternoon…. There was no violence at all. Seven million people attended. There were American flags everywhere. The rallies were the very definition of patriotism: People who love their country and want to do what they can to save it from tyranny."

Johnson, Tomasky notes, "spent the days leading up to the rallies saying they were essentially going to be (George) Soros-backed terrorist gatherings."

"Last Friday," Tomasky writes, "Johnson said, 'You're going to bring together the Marxists, the socialists, the Antifa advocates, the anarchists, and the pro-Hamas wing of the far-left Democratic Party'…. He should be ashamed of himself. He should also have gone to one of the rallies in his congressional district — there appear to have been three of them, and two more right nearby — and seen for himself the flags and the 'I love my country' signs and talked to some of the good and decent people from all walks of life who attended."

Johnson and "others of his Trumpist ilk," Tomasky laments, showed that they "truly understand nothing about the United States of America."

"They think this is a Christian nation," Tomasky observes. "They want a country based on 'biblical principles.' I'm not sure which biblical principles he means. The biblical principles I was taught as a young Episcopalian were to love thy neighbor as thyself, be compassionate toward the poor and needy, treat the stranger among you with love, and don't ever lie. The principles Johnson follows as a legislator are hate thy neighbor, to hell with the poor and needy, throw strangers in detention camps, and worship a man who lies every time he opens his mouth…. And no, the United States is not a Christian nation and was never intended to be."

Michael Tomasky's full article for The New Republic is available at this link.