Bulwark Takes - No Kings: What We—and You—Saw at the Rallies (w/ Jim Swift)

Episode Date: March 29, 2026

The Bulwark's own Jim Swift joins Bill Kristol to talk about No Kings.

Hi, Bill Crystal here from Bullwork on Sunday. Very pleased to be joined by my longtime colleague, first of the weekly standard and then at the Bullwork, a founder of an OG original, a bulwark guy. Jim Swift, senior editor, collaborator on Morning Shots, Cincinnati Bureau Chief. Is that your most important title, would you say? To my fellow Ohioans, it is. They're glad that one of us is here, and I sure saw that yesterday when we were hiking around the hills of Cincinnati. How about your portray? Yeah, we'll get to that a second.

How about your betrayal? You grew up in Cleveland, right? So how, isn't it, is that like, is that better to be from Cleveland and Cincinnati or even worse? It's sort of the rivalry and stuff. Even, even worse, you know, I mean, Cleveland's pretty hard on Cincinnati. Joke is that Cincinnati's more Kentucky. And they say Cleveland, you're more like Canada. And both, both are right and both are wrong.

But it's a friendly rivalry. You know, Tito Francona is the manager here now. And so there's some bridge building going on between Cleveland and Cincinnati. They treat you okay, I trust. Yes. Good. So you were at the Cincinnati No Kings yesterday. I was the one up here in Waltham, Massachusetts, just west of Boston.

Let's exchange, you know, sort of what we, thoughts about what we saw and what we then, of course, have seen elsewhere and read about elsewhere. What struck you that? I'm just curious, what most memorable moment, sign, encounter experience there in Cincinnati at the No Kings? Sure. Well, I followed the No Kings. It's actually my first one that I've attended, but huge, huge turnout. At least 10,000 by my count and by some other more official counts. Very long march that kind of went around downtown as the Cincinnati Reds were facing the Boston Red Sox, which a game they won, the Reds. But there were two signs in particular bill that kind of stuck out for me on the screen now. And one was, I'm here for those who can't be here. And then the other. one was, this all ends when enough of us say no. And the people I talk to, the this all ends when enough of us say no kind of view was held by a lot of people. I spoke with Charlie Sutkamp, who's someone that you may know I've met a number of times who's involved with principals first,

who recognized me. And he's just worried about not enough people standing up and wanting more people to get involved. And similarly, you know, I posted the picture. I'm here for those who can't be here on blue sky. And I got a lot of responses from people, you know, who do have jobs where they have to work on Saturday afternoons, who have family concerns and lives and other sorts of things. There are a lot of people who wanted to be there who couldn't. And so those were kind of some commonalities that I, you know, detected in talking with people who were all very heartened by the turnout. Now, that's great. And this all ends when enough of us they know, was, you know, the bad news is the Trump's president for the next almost three years.

And this is the sense we don't have a parliamentary system and his poll numbers could go down further and people could turn out even more. And, but hopefully the elites, yeah, I feel like the public is now leading the elites by quite a lot. It's so striking, right? In terms of turning against Trump, you see that the polls, but also in the turnout for no kings. And the elite institutions are still accommodating Trump to a somewhat shocking degree.

maybe at some point some of them break and some of the Republicans on the hill, God knows, break. I was in Waltham, which is west of Boston. It's where Brandeis is. Interesting to, I happen to see a couple of friends who live near there, and so we went to that, and that's where they go, that's where they've gone in the past, and some of their family was there. So we went there. It was interesting because it's, Waltham is kind of a middle-class summer, I would say. It's got some academic and upscale types who have moved further west even than sort of. of Cambridge, Belmont, the kind of inner suburbs, you might say, to the west of Boston. But it also has quite a lot of immigrants, actually. And there were a fair number there,

and more middle class, even working class. So it's more of a mixed crowd. Good turnout. I hadn't been to Waltham before, so I couldn't judge comparatively. But they said it was at least as big as the previous one was cold, kind of high 20s. So a little bit discouragement. It's probably there in terms of the turnout. Very nice, old Waltham Com. You know, these New England towns all have commons, and there's a nice common in front of the city hall. I was amused. I went over, and I was wondering what there. There was a statue there of a soldier and, you know, inscriptions on it and stuff.

I walked over. You can see it there. And I assumed it was, you know, I don't know, maybe civil war. There are a ton of civil war, obviously monuments up in New England. And maybe World War I, World War II, it was the Spanish-American War. Or if they said on the, as the monuments called it, the Spanish War Veterans Memorial, and they had the dates, 1898, 1902, and then mentioned Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Philippines.

It's funny how that's maybe other people know more about this than I do, but I would say that's been sort of somewhat forgotten to history, though Trump has bringing back the Cuba interest, I suppose. But at the time, there were a lot of names on the back, so a lot of soldiers fought in those wars and perished in the brief. One just forgets about certain aspects of American history compared to others. Anyway, I was struck that the crowd was, well, I was struck that how sane and sobered.

And this was true, the previous one, I was at in McLean, but if they don't know McLean, Virginia, it's people who've worked in Washington, a lot of ex-Republicans, a more moderate crowd, if you, you know, if you will, and then maybe a lot of places. So this is the suburbs of Boston, very democratic area and a lot of liberal types. Here I got the typical, the typical response, you know, when people recognized me, it was more like, I can't believe I'm here at a rally with you. you know, I was traveling against you 20 years ago, against the Iraq War. Where's in McLean, Virginia, it's a little more, as you know, Jim, you know, a little more of people who, hey, you remember me? We went during the Bush administration, you know, a lot of ex-Republicans. Yeah, Barbara Comstock types.

Yeah, Mona Sharon was there yesterday, actually in McLean with Susan, my wife, and they were, yes, yes, the voter was meeting lots of people who we used to be together on the conservative side. This is sort of different. This was more liberal, but obviously very sane, I mean, very balanced. patriotic, but, and calm. I was very struck by the, which, you know, you go to, I'm not a big demonstration person or a rally person, and probably that's because in my youth, I saw the new left rallies, and I was in high school and a little bit in college, that's before they petered out, and they were, they were kind of crazy, they felt they were a little crazy and sort of,

it wasn't my, my style to kind of get, I wouldn't have been involved, those on the other side politically, but there's a little foot off, I suppose, by the sense of thousands of people getting together. It sort of unleashes various passions and hatreds and so forth. But there's almost none of that, I've got to say. I mean, a lot of anti-Trump signs and ridiculing him, and I guess not friendly to him, or to Stephen Miller or to others. But I was struck by the sobriety of people, at a sense that we're in this for a while. I mean, this was not like, we're going to show up here and everything's going to be great Monday. There was a lot of talk about people wanted to know what do what do we think is going to happen on

the DHS and ICE, on the war, on the million, on the elections in 26 and 28. I mean, very sober. I was amused that some White House spokeswoman had said Thursday, I think, something about this, this is Trump derangement syndrome, you know, therapy or something. I really thought, you know, the one thing it doesn't feel like is any kind of derangement. You know, you can say, if you have a different political point of view, that people there are just wrong about their, you know, wanting not to go to war and with Iran or on or on. or about ice or whatever, but there's no, very few oddballs, honestly,

or crackpots. Not to say anything wrong to being an oddball, but, you know, it struck me. It struck me. It was really, in that respect, it was sort of moving, I would say. People were serious and sober, but they were also good nature and happy to see their friends and neighbors, and then they liked the funny signs, making fun of the Trump people, but also, as you mentioned, the more serious signs. What was the mood in Cincinnati, middle America there?

Bill, I was so impressed by the 50-50-1 organizers, and that's, you know, 50 states, 50 protests. I might be getting the last one part, but like one common goal. Yeah, I was just really impressed by their organization, not only just the parade route, which had I known how long it was, I might have packed a little bit differently. It was very cold, but also very sunny, and I was exhausted at the end of it. It was like playing around to golf, you know, and carrying your clubs. It was, I got, granted it, it's also my middle age. But what really impressed me about their organization, I mean, they had, I would say probably 50 to 100 people who were volunteers wearing orange and yellow vests. And they had different meetings rich.

Each they were all radioed up. And, you know, the police, obviously there was a permit and the police were escorting the march through downtown. But like you said, there's always elements of kind of quackery at any kind of political protest, whether it's on the last. left or whether you're the Tea Party protesting Obamacare outside of the House, you know, in 2010. But what I was truly impressed by was, you know, looking at these signs, you could tell that there were people within the group that didn't agree with each other, either on a policy specifically or a candidate, for example, it wasn't really candidate-driven. But locally, you know, you can look at the signs and do the math.

Those people aren't going to agree. Why aren't they arguing with each other? Because it was one cause. And so, you know, there was no attempt really. to co-opt this to make it about just one thing. And I was impressed by that, that people kind of put aside their differences. And that was more left on left than right on left, for example. But it wasn't co-opted.

It was people who had different views on flashpoint issues with signs that kind of contradicted each other. They're marching in peace together. Now, granted, I didn't get to see how all 10 or 20,000 people were in. interacting, but I think I got a pretty good sense of it. And I didn't see any arrests. I didn't see any bad behavior. There was a little bit of a counter protest element where a Trump supporter was walking in front of it to kind of troll with Christ is king. And some people said, like, what are you doing here? Go do your own thing. But nothing in the way that worried me or I felt

wasn't in danger to anyone's safety. It was really heartening. And like I said, in my overtime newsletter, you know, fresh off of our events in Minnesota, in Dallas and Austin, these things really, to be corny, put the wind in our sales of the bulwark, so to speak. And that's not just a marketing line. It really is. I mean, when you, like you and I do, kind of live in a bath of this perpetual, horrible news cycle, and we're just so painfully aware of even weird minutiae that, you know, doesn't cross most people's news feeds, it's depressing. So to go out and see how, like, there was a guy, Bob, who, had about 10 bamboo poles that were seven feet each and he had fixed flags from Ohio,

Cincinnati, but places like Greenland, Ukraine, Mexico, Canada, and he just gave them out to his friends there. And the U.S. In U.S., of course. It was like the Super Bowl, so we don't want to avoid that. U.S. flag was there prominently, maybe even a little higher per the flag code. But, you know, this guy had like a belt with like flagpole holders that just from bamboo. and, you know, he was worried about election.

I talked to him. He was worried about the midterm elections and what Trump's trying to do with the SAVE Act, whether he might be using ICE at the polls, you know, a lot of things to be worried about there. But I think everyone had their head on pretty straight. Now, that's encouraging. You know, one of the things, I think they did a very good job with the organizers. So there's a lot of training. They were also marshals and Waltham was very peaceful.

and they asked people to thank the police who showed up, and there were a few cops who were standing over basically, you know, there was no issues. So, but it was good to have them there, and people went up and thanked them. And, yeah, I'm struck that the organizers. I know the Indivisible guys a little bit, and they were a key element.

There were many groups involved in many different people in different places. One of those really intelligent things they did, I think, was so here there was, they scheduled most of the, No King's events in places like Wall family, Cambridge, or elsewhere, sort of late morning, so people could then go if they wish to the Boston Common, which is where the big mutual event was, more than 100,000 people in Boston, downtown Boston.

So they had several big events, Minneapolis, with Springsteen, obviously, in New York. But unlike other marches, where it's a march on Washington or a march in New York or some few big cities, they really went out of their way to encourage local communities, and they helped them. I went to the website many times over the last few weeks,

helped them organize, put them in touch with each other. You could sign up to go to McLean, and they told you where to go, and they told you made some recommendations about signs, and then they had some available few there and so forth. So it really was a kind of, it felt like it was. A lot of people around the nation, some in very big groups of 100,000, but many, many, many, and much, much smaller groups of something like 10,000 since that. But some more like, I don't know, 500 or 2,000, I'm getting a guess,

and wall fam and um and that's really i i thought that was intelligent i mean it was it was nice it felt more like communities getting together to express their sentiments not like a mass you know a mob scene kind of thing uh and i think it was intelligent politically in the sense that it just makes it seem and it really makes it seem because it really was more of a more of a natural thing they also uh i talked about one of the organizers about this before the last no kings but they obviously kept to the same playbook. They didn't have speeches. I don't know if Cincinnati did, but in the smaller ones, like in Waltham, they went out of their way not to have, you know, a bike and local dignitaries, the local, you know, they could have gotten those everyone. I think it's all the lots of office

in the Waltham area is probably on board with no Kings. So it's all Democrats. And so, you know, they would have been happy to speak and they could have had the leaders of different groups. And they really understood that that changes the character. Then it's a more political. Then you got in. If you invite this group, you've got to invite that. group and suddenly you have, you know, 18 different speakers, and then they're three minutes each, but they don't stay at three minutes, and then suddenly it's an hour and a half standing around listening to speeches. None of that. Milling around, waving the signs, like a little bit of a couple of pickup bands, sort of marching bands, you know, people with like six instruments, trombone and stuff,

you know, kind of walking through the parade and playing fun tunes and also some folk songs, and this land is my land, and then some patriotic, you know, songs, battle him of the Republic and stuff. And so that was good for the, that was nice. But they really went out of their way to make it. But mostly it was just people and then, as I say, people chanting a little bit, but not even that much. They really encourage people driving by to honk and there's a lot of that. So that was the noise. It was mostly people. But again, think about it. That's individual citizens in their cars showing support. It's not, they're not chanting in a mob the same thing. There's always something slightly off-putting. I find about 100,000 people chanting the same thing. It could be powerful

But it's also a little bit like, you know, has a sort of feel of, they could also be chanting things you don't like, right? Whereas people showing up, not all at the same time, some at 1030, some at 1045, some at 11, coming and going a bit, saying hello to their families and chatting about life in general before they sort of start, you know, joining along in one of the songs. I mean, it has a real community feel to it

that I think they went out of their way to encourage. And I think that, I think it worked. And I think it's intelligent to honestly politically. Yeah, we had a couple speeches in Cincinnati, but I think that they were smart to avoid that sort of, you know, coalitions group trap. Like once you start giving groups a microphone, you know, where do you draw the line?

And then it's my group not important enough. There weren't groups. They had some kind of, like I might be butchering their name as like the Cincinnati democracy singers, which was like a little choir, diverse choir of people who were singing folk songs and other hymn. and that was really nice. The organizer spoke a little bit. And then, I mean, really the main future.

And I tried to get him to talk was Professor Timothy Snyder from Yale. And he dates, you know, he said that his family has been here in Southwest Ohio for, you know, 125 years. And so he has come to every single No Kings in Cincinnati. And he spoke at the last one. And he spoke at this one too and gave a very nice speech about, you know, which is fitting. for one of his books on freedom and getting people to kind of associate no kings. And then the response from the crowd was freedom. Now, no blue William Wallace face paint, though maybe next time.

But it was, yeah, they avoided the kind of coalition's trap. And we had, you know, we had guys with trombones and whatnot going around too. But it was it was just really impressive because you didn't get a sense of the size of the scale. the parade until we started going up one of the hills back into downtown. Because when we're all around City Hall, it's hard to know because everyone was so densely packed in. But then as the march kind of made its way, I had kind of gone around Great American Ballpark and crossed over U.S. 50. And I was on a bridge kind of walking back. I'm like, wait a minute, there's a group going all the way around the Underground Railroad Freedom Museum, which is here in Cincinnati,

on the kind of the same street in between the baseball and the football stadiums. I just, that's when I realized, well, you know, I thought maybe five, six thousand when we were just around City Hall. But no, it was, it was clearly 10,000 plus. And so I was just very impressed. And if you look at, you know, the map that you were talking about, I was looking at that too. Of course, for my first one, I had to go to downtown Cincinnati as a new Cincinnati. But they had ones in Covington across the river. They had ones in Eastgate, which is kind of, you know, mostly kind of working class suburb.

They had one in Mason. They were all around. And if you look at that map, it's just so impressive, just the amount of protests that they had. And so really, you didn't have, unless you lived in Utah or kind of one of the more mountain west states, you didn't have to go very far to find one of these things. And really just the scale of it was, you know, struck me as impressive too. Yeah, no, that's interesting and important. Anything strike you about the substances, maybe what issues were on people's minds either in terms of just what signs you saw? So so many of the signs are homemade.

I do think it reflects people's concerns much more than if they're handing out mass-produced ones. There were a couple that were sort of available that had been produced. But actually, the huge majority, at least where we were where I was, were handwritten and handmade. And anything that struck you that one issue was more or less dominant or surprised you. We discussed it on the live stream yesterday a little bit. And there was some question of it, is how central was the war to people, essentially it was the war in people's minds. Yeah, I would say that that's probably one of the top three issues and signs was the war on Iran.

But I would say that a lot of the people that I spoke to, of course, were concerned about that, but they may be reusing their signs because the big fear really is the SAVE Act, right? And, you know, things that they're trying to do to meddle in the elections. But one, to your point about the kind of pre-printed nature of the signs, I think people were maybe a little wounded by these. accusations of AstroTurf, right? And so, you know, I saw a number of hand-done signs that said, you know, no one's paying me to be here. I hate you for free. And, you know, I saw a number of signs like that, you know, ranging from PG to, you know, beyond PG-13, let's put it that

way. But, you know, people really resented the insinuation that someone was paying them to be out there. And, you know, some of the signs that you'd seen in Waltham about older people, it's like, you know, I'm 91 and it's that bad. I saw a bunch of signs like that. And, you know, big props, as the kids say, to the elders in their 80s, 90s who came out because they, they, it is that bad. And they wanted to be out there and show the importance of their presence, which I found pretty powerful. Yeah, no, that was, I was struck by that at Waltham. I mean, there's a fair amount of Mappar more stuff. And often, I think someone who, Andrew Hager had been in when growth in Virginia, I thought it was more ICE-focused.

I do think Minneapolis remains very much on people's minds, and the continued, what ICE continues to do, and not just in Minnesota, but everywhere else. And what they could do, of course, with this force that, you know, at Trump's disposal, it's recruiting people, and it doesn't seem to be particularly following any laws or rules. So, yeah, I was struck by people's concerned about that, but I think you're right.

People have different, the sayback thing is interesting that that's sort of broken through as their attempt to. I guess, of course, Trump talks about it all the time, so why wouldn't it break through? And he clearly cares about it. And it's such a transparent effort to just deal with a non-problem, you know, but not to deal with a non-problem, but to suppress the vote, basically, and give the Fed's excuse to come in and do so. So I'm glad people actually were focused on that.

that. Yeah. And, you know, I saw a guy from the American Postal Workers Union who had a beat-up old shirt that you could tell, as an owner of many old t-shirts that was 20-plus years old about the importance of the mail-end vote, which, of course, Trump himself just voted in that Palm Beach election, which the Democrats flipped. But, yeah, so they were very interested in the election stuff. and I would say that they were also concerned about ice. I mean, just, you know, about an hour and a half north of here is Springfield, Ohio, or I've gone a couple times to do some reports. People were organizing and giving out whistle kits. Now, I bet Springfield, I didn't check the map because I wasn't going up there, but I'm positive Springfield had a no-Kings rally. I would bet my life savings that there was one in that area.

But that is whatever one years... What happens is, Eddie, would you give me? having a talk about, what was that, before the election, so 18 months ago. Dance had just demagogue the Haitians and Springfield stuff in a really shameful way. And we didn't make it up to Springfield. We talked about it that I had to give this talk in Cincinnati and stuff and it wasn't there that long. But what's going on up there? I mean, there hasn't been the crackdown yet in Springfield and life just goes on.

Do you have the Senate? Well, you were there pretty recently doing some reporting for us. Yeah, I was there on the eve of Christy Noam. she had revoked their temporary protective status and Judge Garcia had stepped in and, you know, for an undetermined, it's stayed for the short term. So everyone's kind of breathed the sigh of relief, but, you know, I spoke with Viles Dorsainville from the Haitian Immigrant Alliance up there. I spoke with Pastor Ruby from the Central Mission Church. I went inside the church where they are prepared for sanctuary. Should it come to that? everyone is scared there. The same sorts of issues that you're seeing, we went up to Minnesota, you know,

for you, you were at some of the sites, but we were raising money for second harvest up there. People are afraid to leave their homes. So it's a small version of what's happening in Minneapolis. And the sense of the community that I got up there was that everyone recognizes that Springfield was a dying industrial town that would be in much,

worse shape. The pastor ruby told me that it would if if Trump goes through with this and goes in and starts you know after stripping away protective status from Haitians and sends them all back to war torn Haiti, it would set the city back over 50 years and they are very appreciative of just the community contributions that the Haitian community is brought to that area. The building growth and housing that it's doing. It isn't, you know, a Detroit situation. I mean, every small town in Ohio has old run-down houses. But I was, you know, up next to a shopping center where I was doing some, some microphone shopping and, you know, watching them build huge new kind of townhouse communities and whatnot. So you get the sense that that kind of growth is in part, largely in part, fueled by

Haitians, helping taking over housings and housing in that area and allowing people to, you know, find newer and better housing. This kind of happens in a kind of gentrification sort of way. You know, there's a demand, and the Haitians are meeting it both in work and filling the housing, and it's doing pretty well. And but people are on edge there. They're thankful for that kind of reprieve. But the organizers in Cincinnati were giving out whistle kits.

I'm not as worried about ice going around downtown Cincinnati since it's so, the city itself is so blue. but people are acutely aware that Springfield could be a smaller version of what we saw transpire in Minneapolis and the greater Minnesota area. Yeah, the Springfield thing, I just remember that in September, obviously of 2024. And I really thought they can't, surely this is a bridge too far. Surely people are going to rebel against it. It's so obviously racially motivated. And so obviously a dog whistle. And so obviously addressing a problem that's not a problem since the governor and the mayor were happy to have these Haitians there.

They were law-abiding and they had legally temporary protected status as they had applied for it. If you get TPS, temporary protection status, you have to, I think, register or show up every six months or check in every six or 12 months. You're not, you're the opposite of undocumented and of, you know, people not be able to keep track. If you're literally on a list and you show up and you say, I'm here and I'm working, you're allowed to work with TPS. That's the point of it. You're paying taxes. If you break a law, you can be deprived of TPS. some people are if they do something illegal.

So it's not as if they're, it's not a get out of jail free card either. So in a way, you would want people to be on this if you're concerned as they claim to be about undocumented people going around doing terrible things. And it was so evidently a dog whistle. And the fact that they got away with it, I really felt like that. For me, that was when I thought, geez, maybe Trump will win. I mean, if people aren't going to be upset about that. And then it was such a, I think in a way, an indicator of,

what the second term would be like, just how unembarrassed the authoritarianism would be in the bigotry, honestly. First term was held them checked somewhat by different various constraints within the administration and probably people weren't used to it yet, but after eight years it really, well, now we have the second term we have,

I don't know. People were in general, hopeful, worried, some combination, I'm sure, but did people, I mean, any sense of, I guess they'll be politically motivated, in November of his old way, do you think? I mean, I assume so. Yeah, I mean, I would say both simultaneously hopeful and worried,

I was wearing the bulwark band hat for visibility, because I'm not one of our biggest faces, unless you're really obsessed with the bulwark, and if you're from the beginning, you might not know who I am. And remember one lady's- If you are such a person, we give you credits. We give you a hat tip for being, yes.

But not everyone. It's shocking to know that not everyone is obsessed with every single person at the bulwark. Fair enough. But one lady said, you're not Sam Stein. I said, I'm a little taller. You know, and I had sunglasses on. So, I mean, kind of white guy, darkish hair.

I could have been Sam Stein. And no pearl. So I wasn't Tim Miller, but I did talk to a OG reader named Blaze, who I did a little interview with. And he had a funny message. He goes, Tim Miller's going soft. And he said that in a joking way. But more like that, Tim has a soft.

You know, he's, you know, as hard as Tim goes, but like, He's a softy heart, which we all know about Tim. He's a very loving colleague to everybody. But it was nice to meet some bulwark people. I mean, of course, I know Charlie Sutkamp, who I referenced earlier from principals first. But a couple people would just see my hat and they say, well, Bullwork, thank you for being here. I love what you guys do, which is just really so heartening. I mean, when you think about, I put this in overtime, thinking about what our live streams were like on Thursday night, bulwark in those early days.

you know, kind of the professionalism now that we're streaming almost every day. Here we are on Sunday doing kind of little shows. You put it in your overtime newsletter on Saturday. You mentioned the Thursday night bubble, which I think was our first effort. We had the notion that people might like to see us talk, not just to read.

Well, at the time, there was really, there was really Charlie Sexton's morning shots and JVL's triad. I think we were already that way. Those are the two newsletters or the two regular publications. And when they even, maybe there were newsletters already. And then there was Charlie's podcast. And then Tim joined.

And then the rest of us chipped in a lot for the website. But yeah, you're right. That was sort of a – maybe people would like to see us talk, you know, just in a kind of more informal way, not an interview like a podcast, but there's two or three or four of us. Yeah, those are Thursday night. And I guess that was the germ of the whole – yeah, of a lot of the secret podcast and the next level

and all the different sort of intramble work talking. stuff as well as obviously the bulk of what we do is interview bringing it others and talk to them and get their knowledge but that was a while ago when was that that was like 2019-2020 you think yeah 2019-2020 was during the pandemic and that was part of the logic too it was like people are locked in home let's do this at night and we do it on like zoom and things like that and it was it really was tin cans and wire and duct tape and a lot could go wrong and not to say things don't go wrong these days they do but everyone's nice and accepting about it but it really was a little strong snowball that kind of turned into this now where I can wear a bulwark hat, walk around Cincinnati,

and have people say, bullwork, like the publication? I'm like, yeah, and talk with them about it. And just to beat our community members out there, it was, it was nice into just to chat with it. Not all of them wanted to be on video. And I didn't ask why they didn't want to talk about in video. I was happy not to feature them. They have bosses who may not agree with them and so forth. I don't blame them. Yeah. But I got stopped probably a dozen times. Wow. Great.

And it was just wind in my sales, as I said earlier, and as tired and old as I am getting, you know, I can't wait for the next one. No, no, same here. And it really was, and that's more importantly than its effect on us, it's a fact on the country, which I really think was important. And each of these things is only part of the mosaic. We obviously have to win legislative victories and stop things in court. and get institutions to change their behavior, law firms and businesses and so forth. So there are a million different fronts to fight on.

But this one is an important one. And it is a democracy and there's a kind of popular, this kind of legitimacy, I think, that comes from just the numbers. And again, but again, not just numbers, but peaceful and thoughtful gatherings of people committed to democracy, not committed to some particular cause, not committed to, look, I respect unions, I respect interest groups, I respect, you know, other kinds of identity groups, but they're fighting often for their own benefits. Now, they're totally entitled to do so, and often they, they, they, they, it could be a just

cause. I don't mean to any way minimize that. It could be, it could also be of, of greatest significance than just their interests. But still, this is really remarkable, and maybe I'll just close on this, I think people don't quite appreciate, this is people coming out for the public good. Many of the people at Bollfam, it was, you know, they were doing okay. I, I, I didn't see a lot of, you know, people have jobs, people are, are, are retired, and they They've saved some money. People have young families and seem to be happy and they were going to a ballgame afterwards. And, you know, it's a little league or something.

I mean, it's a struggle. I guess it's not quite baseball season, but they said they're going to sports events. You know, God knows, hockey. Hockey's big up here. Hockey basketball and stuff. And, you know, so it wasn't like people are, people are probably entitled to protest, you know, a more immediate self-interested grounds, if you want to call it a thing of this. What's very striking here is that people are coming out for the, for the common

good. And so for all the talk about how the culture is corrupted and people don't care anymore and there's no patriotism anymore, I really think these no Kings protests make one think, you know what, the country may be a little better than we think it is. We made some mistakes electorally. We're paying a real price and not all of our fellow citizens maybe have the same attitude. But no, it is heartening. And it's important, I think, for all of us to have that sense that there's a country here that's not that's worth saving and that is uh may save itself so that's yeah i was very cheered up by it final word jim final word i mean you you can tell who the the hardened protest professionals are um but that was not most of the people there it was very bulwarking

in in that sense you know and we have you know we've made t-shirts and whatnot and taglines you're not the crazy ones one of the best things about the bulwark is the community and realizing you're not alone. And, you know, not everyone is someone who has a flag flying of any kind, whether it's a protest or an American flag or a sign in their yard. People were curious. They were fed up and they went out and they saw that tens and thousands of their neighbors, just like them, who are not hardened politicos or protest professionals, were just like them and that they weren't alone. And the high visibility, unless you had to take off from your job, it doesn't really cost all that much to do. And I think that's really why these marches and rallies,

have been so successful. So I think we'll see more of them, and they're going to continue to be great if they keep the playbook up, I think. Yeah, I agree. Well, thanks, Jim. That was well said, and thank you for everything you've done,

obviously at the Bullwark and all these years of work together, but thank you for joining me this Sunday morning on the Bullwork on Sunday. And thank you all. Happy to be here.