Protesters gathered across the nation over the weekend to demonstrate against Elon Musk and the Trump administration, but were the protests the result of a grassroots movement or a highly coordinated left-wing activist campaign?
The media lauded the so-called “Hands Off” protests, which were planned for all 50 states and Washington, D.C. to target perceived threats to democracy and the work of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). And while the reporting focused on crowd size and the “eye-catching” signs on display (yes, MSNBC and Reuters devoted entire slideshows to the posters), what was lacking from the majority of coverage was any note of who was behind the organized events.
On Monday’s show, Megyn was joined by Victor Davis Hanson, author of The End of Everything, to discuss the truth about the protests and what the rallygoers reveal about the state of the anti-Trump movement.
Grassroots or Astroturf?
Dozens of Hands Off rallies popped up across the country on Saturday protesting Donald Trump, Musk and the administration, with protesters appearing to conform to similarly vague talking points. “It’s like the Cory Booker speech [in the Senate] – no one really knows what exactly they are protesting,” Megyn noted. “They just want you to know they are angry and ‘hands off,’ which seems like a better slogan for the #MeToo movement than whatever this is.”
Regardless, the coordinated language is not surprising when you consider progressive activist group Indivisible – founded by Ezra Levin and Leah Greenberg in the wake of Donald Trump’s 2016 election win – played a significant role in organizing the events. If that name sounds familiar, it is because the same organization behind the protests at various GOP town halls in recent weeks.
Much like Hands Off, those town halls were celebrated by the media and portrayed as organic events. In reality, they have all been coordinated with help from Indivisible, which – as reported in Monday’s AM Update – has grown into a powerful network with chapters across all 50 states. It has also accepted more than $7.6 million from George Soros’ Open Society Foundations.
More than 150 left-wing organizations – including the ACLU, the Women’s March, Move On, Democratic Socialists of America, and Planned Parenthood to name a few – joined in to increase turnout “in opposition to Trump and Musk’s attempts to steal our public services and our democracy.”
The Lack of Substance
While there were plenty of slogans deployed with varying degrees of success (video circulating online showed organizers at the D.C. event tried – and failed – to get a “No Trump. No KKK. No Fascist USA.” chant going), there wasn’t a cohesive message around what exactly protesters were, well, protesting.
Instead, identity politics seemed to be the name of the game. Case in point? Activist Gabriel Eaton, who took to the mic to offer this all-encompassing bio: “I am black. I am Filipino-Japanese, second generation. And I’m a disabled trans man. But I’m also a Medicaid patient. I’m also a person who uses food stamps. I’m also a person who has been through houselessness in this country. I am also a person who has gone through substance use and addiction. And most of all, I am a patient of Planned Parenthood. I am everything that Donald Trump and Elon Musk want to erase.”
Not to be outdone, Greisa Martinez Rosas, the executive director of United We Dream, included her immigration status in her introduction. “I am an immigrant. I am undocumented, unafraid, queer, and unashamed,” she declared.
Hanson said the clips from the weekend illustrate exactly what is lacking with the anti-Trump left. “I was always taught by my fifth grade composition teacher that when you are writing or speaking… remember to limit the first person ‘I’ to one or two times,” he noted. “All these people have one thing in common… It wasn’t about the it wasn’t about the message; it was about ‘me, me, me.'”
All the while, they fail to offer any substantive criticism or alternative to what Trump and/or Musk are doing. “They never present any evidence. So she says, ‘I am everything he wants to erase’… This entire therapeutic left-wing movement is predicated on narcissism and ‘I,'” Hanson concluded. “I don’t really care what their stories are. I want to hear their ideas, and their arguments, and whether they will stand antitheses. But it is always about ‘me, me, me, me.'”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Hanson by tuning in to episode 1,043 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.