Two of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet secretaries said Democrats are keeping the government closed for the sake of “No Kings” mass protests scheduled for Saturday, Oct. 18.
The comments, made on the same Fox Business show on Oct. 13, echo those of congressional Republicans who have blamed the now two-week-long shutdown on Democrats, saying they wanted to keep the government closed until after the protests in hopes they can show party activists they are pushing back on the Trump administration.
In criticizing the rallies, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said: “’No Kings’ means no paychecks, no paychecks and no government.”
Liberal groups have criticized elected Democrats for not doing enough in Congress to resist Trump’s changes to the federal government. Senate Democrats are refusing to approve a short-term funding measure for the federal government, demanding Republicans restore large cuts to Obamacare and Medicaid that will cost millions of people their health insurance.
Rally organizers told USA TODAY they expect the crowds to joyfully, and peacefully, celebrate their First Amendment right to protest. They’ve used the comments to draw more attention to their upcoming events.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told Fox he expected millions of attendees will be “part of antifa, paid protesters. It begs the question (of) who’s funding it.”
Duffy accused the protesters of dictating the actions of Democratic leaders.
“Democrats want to wait for a big rally of a No Kings protest when the bottom line is, who is running the show in the Senate?” Duffy said.
“Chuck Schumer’s not running the show,” he said of the Senate minority leader, a Democrat. “The No Kings protesters or organizers are running the show.”
Leah Greenberg, cofounder of Indivisible, one of the groups organizing the protests, responded on social media: “This is what it looks like when you’ve fully lost control of the message and you’re panicking.”
No Kings protests are scheduled at more than 2,500 locations across the country, with one of several flagship protests planned outside the U.S. Capitol. Protests led by these same organizers over the past year, including a June 14 rally also named No Kings, have been peaceful and drawn massive crowds.
On Oct. 10, several congressional Republicans referred to the protests as “hate America” rallies and accused Democrats of keeping the government closed at the request of activists.
House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana, a Republican, said on Fox News that Republicans were hearing that Democrats wouldn’t reopen the government until after the rallies because “they can’t face their rabid base.” Activists have been upset with Schumer for voting with Republicans in March to avoid a government shutdown.
Johnson said he’s tired of waiting for the Democrats to agree to end the shutdown.
“We’re so angry about it. I mean, I’m a very patient guy, but I’ve had it with these people. They are playing games with real people’s lives. The theory we have right now ‒ they have a hate America rally that’s scheduled for October 18 on the National Mall. It’s all the pro-Hamas wing and antifa people; they are all coming out.”
On Newsmax, Republican Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas said Democrats have to put on a show with the protest before they will allow the government to reopen.
“October 18 is when the protest gets here. This will be a Soros-paid-for protest for his professional protesters. The agitators show up,” Marshall said, referring to billionaire George Soros, who has backed Democratic causes but is not an organizer or publicly connected to the protests. “We’ll have to get the National Guard out. Hopefully it will be peaceful. I doubt it.”
There has been no public discussion of plans to have the National Guard sent to the Washington event or any others.
In a statement Oct. 10, the coalition of groups putting on the protests, rallies and marches stressed that organizers undergo security and de-escalation training to avoid violence.
“Speaker Johnson is running out of excuses for keeping the government shut down. Instead of reopening the government, preserving affordable healthcare or lowering costs for working families, he’s attacking millions of Americans who are peacefully coming together to say that America belongs to its people, not to kings,” the statement says. “We’ll see everyone on Oct. 18.”
Hunter Dunn, a national spokesperson for the protest group 50501, said he finds it funny that Republican rhetoric about the rally swings from being a tactic to keep the government closed to being full of paid protesters who hate the country.
“You kind of got to pick which lie you’re going with,” he said. “The enemy can’t be simultaneously both weak and strong.”
Senior national political correspondent Sarah D. Wire, can be reached at swire@usatoday.com.