Roger Marshall ought to apologize.
Countless Americans filled the streets of cities large and small on Saturday for “No Kings” protests against Donald Trump’s increasingly imperious presidency.
There is a long history of anti-government demonstrations in this country — if you’re reading this, you probably remember the anti-Barack Obama “Tea Party” marches of the late aughts — and thanks to the First Amendment, you might even say such displays are part of the American birthright.
Before the weekend protests, though, Marshall went on TV and smeared the demonstrators for no good reason.
“This will be a Soros-paid-for protest, where his professional protesters show up,” Kansas’ junior senator told Newsmax.
“The agitators show up. We’ll have to get the National Guard out. Hopefully, it will be peaceful; I doubt it as well.”
Turns out he was completely wrong. He ought to say so.
Peaceful, patriotic protesters
There were two calumnies in Marshall’s comments about the protests: First was the allegation that a billionaire such as George Soros was paying “professional protesters” to turn out.
The sheer numbers of folks who showed up — in places like Boston and Chicago, but also in red state locales like Kansas City, Wichita and Cottonwood Falls — makes that particular assertion unlikely.
The folks carrying signs weren’t professionals. Mostly they were your neighbors.
They weren’t radicals, either. They were normal folks who see a president eager to send armed troops into American cities, normal folks who worry that our nation’s nearly 250-year-old democratic experiment is in danger of collapsing.
“I want the Republicans to know that we love America,” one woman told The Kansas City Star.
The protest was “a celebration of our democracy and our ability to be able to protest,” another told The Wichita Eagle.
Marshall’s second error was to suggest the protests would turn violent. Didn’t happen.
The Americans who marched on Saturday weren’t violent mercenaries. They were peaceful patriots. And Roger Marshall smeared them.
