Sunday’s New York Times featured favorable stories on the worldwide “No Kings” rallies, which lumped together various leftist grievances, be they anti-Trump, or anti-ICE, or anti-Iran War in nature. The front-page story by Jeremy Peters, “Will Primal Scream of ‘No Kings’ Echo in Voting Booths?” The coverage implied "We hope so."
Peters penned the soppy line: “Demonstrators were steadfast in their opposition to the Trump administration. There was also evidence of community in a shared purpose.”
But the most overwhelmingly biased story was the online “A Show of Defiance Across the Nation,” featuring lovingly curated photos from “No Kings” rallies. A total of 17 journalists (including lead journalist Ernesto Londono) produced 1,200 words of text, accompanied by a staggering 44 photographs. Londono gushed:
In big cities and small towns across the world, protesters gathered for rallies against President Trump and his policies and actions, with the self-stated goal of fighting dictatorship.
Demonstrators, including elected officials and community leaders, chanted defiant messages and carried homemade signs that condemned the war in Iran, threats against voting rights and the White House’s mass deportation push, among other topics. Organized by a coalition of activist groups under the banner “No Kings,” it was the third such countrywide protest in the past 10 months.
One of the largest rallies took place outside the Minnesota Capitol, where the singer Bruce Springsteen performed “Streets of Minneapolis,” which he wrote to protest the immigration crackdown that led to the fatal shootings of two American citizens by federal agents in January.
“They picked the wrong city,” Mr. Springsteen told a crowd of thousands, adding that “these invasions of American cities will not stand.”
….
Organizers expected the demonstrations in the United States to draw both small groups and crowds of hundreds of thousands, featuring regular people and global superstars speaking out against what they see as overreach by the Trump administration in areas including health care, the environment and war. Similar demonstrations, focused on denouncing conservative policies, are planned for around the world.
In a statement Thursday, a White House spokeswoman, Abigail Jackson, called the protests “Trump derangement therapy sessions.”
The story promised “a selection of scenes,” and indeed there were photos from Omaha, Austin, Chicago, etc., as well as London and Paris, often accompanied by radical anti-Trump statements, which all went unchallenged.
Like many silver-haired protesters gathered at Auditorium Shores, a riverside park in Austin, Texas, Gilbert Martinez, a 93-year-old Korean War veteran, sees Mr. Trump as reckless and rebellious. And that’s not aligned with the values Mr. Martinez has spent his life preaching.
He called the attack on Iran a “diversion.”
“That idiot is going to cause a lot of good military people to lose their lives,” he said.
The Times let this D.C. protester accuse U.S. forces of targeting a school in Iran.
Eileen McHugh, 59, traveled an hour from her Republican-leaning town in Westchester County to protest at Columbus Circle.
“The whole Republican Party has blood on their hands,” Ms. McHugh said. “Bombing boats in Venezuela and schools in Iran is murder.”
This one was truly ridiculous:
Deana Fredericks, 65, was among a group of women wearing outfits inspired by “The Handmaid’s Tale,” a show drawn from the Margaret Atwood novel that depicts a totalitarian society in which women are treated as property. “We’re concerned about women’s rights, but it’s also gone beyond that,” she said, citing the Iran war and voting rights.
The irony of protesters wearing oppressive “Handmaid” outfits in defense of an Iranian theocracy that literally requires women to cover themselves was evidently lost both on the women cosplaying oppression, and their allies at the Times.
