By Abe Greenwald
Friday, March 27, 2026
The soldiers of the anti-Trump resistance don’t
understand something fundamental about the man they detest. Donald Trump loves
the “No Kings” rallies, at least a little bit. He gets to watch millions of
people gather across the country and describe him as a king—a dream come true.
Tomorrow—when the next round of No Kings demonstrations is planned—I suspect
he’ll turn on his wall of TVs, order some burgers, and enjoy.
Without these protests, Trump must make do with cosmetic
gestures of self-coronation. He has decked out the White House with faux-regal
gilt fixtures, renamed institutions after himself, added his signature to U.S.
currency, and is reportedly pushing to mint one-dollar coins bearing his image.
None of these superficial bids for royal status have
prevented him from being hemmed in by the usual checks and balances and
democratic forces that limit executive power in the United States. As Trump
said ahead of an earlier No Kings event last June, “I don’t feel like a king, I
have to go through hell to get stuff approved.”
More often, he has to go through hell only to have his
initiatives shot down. His administration has faced nearly 700 lawsuits so far
and lost more than 70 percent of them. That’s literally a new record for an
American president—never mind a monarch.
He’s lost on immigration and deportation, emergency
powers, deregulation, and more. And political winds have also forced him to
back down and change course, as we saw in the aftermath of the tragic ICE
disasters in Minnesota.
Trump is such an oppressive emperor that Americans have
felt completely secure in coming out to publicly protest him and his
administrations more than they have any previous president. His suppression
machine is clearly on the fritz.
No one believes in Trump’s absolute rule more than the
resistance. That’s why it’s got to give him a bit of a thrill every time they
take to the streets to reaffirm this imaginary status. That they disapprove of
King Trump only reinforces the idea’s reality. For Trump, making enemies is the
definition of power. And it’s also good fun. Last June, the White House shared
on social media a fake Time magazine cover showing a crowned Trump above
the caption “Long live the king.” In October, after another day of No Kings
rallies, he posted an AI-generated video on Truth Social portraying him as the
crowned pilot of a military jet named King Trump. The president takes off,
flies the plane over the protests, and drops garbage on the crowds. No, I don’t
approve—the point is, he loves this stuff. If not an actual king, Trump is the
undisputed King of Trolling. He lives to get under the skin of the resistance.
What do No Kings protesters think they’re
achieving? What do they want? The truth is, they have no specific goals.
Because, in the end, their objective—like the media’s—is aligned with Trump’s:
to ensure that he maintains full dominion over the American psyche. He clearly
appreciates it.
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