This week three Governors and a former NFL player “Punched Trump in the Face”
We need this every day!
For the past few weeks I’ve penned articles focusing on various “profiles in resistance.” But you know what?! Resistance is so 2017. What we need is more of the very point I made in my article published the first week of February: “Democratic leaders must punch Trump in the face—every single day.”
What I meant by “punching Trump in the face” is about taking the fight to him each and every day with the goal being to grab headlines and knock Trump off his game. It’s not enough to simply resist Trump like in his first term. This time we are locked in a battle to preserve our Republic from an aspiring tyrant. That means we need to come for Trump ferociously and with no mercy— because as the famed expression goes, “When you strike at the King, you must kill him.” That is especially true when it comes to Trump who this week literally referred to himself as “the king.”
That is why going forward I will highlight those who are taking the fight to Trump. And this week we saw four great examples of people “punching Trump in the face.”
1. New York Governor Kathy Hochul. Up until now, Hochul has tried to play nice with Trump trying to find “common ground” as she put it. Well that thankfully ended this week when Hochul reared back and punched the crap out of Trump. This came after Trump suddenly declared he was using his power to end New York City’s congestion pricing plan which had been approved by Biden’s Department of Transportation and had been in place for six weeks. (As a person living in Manhattan, I had reservations about the plan but it has greatly reduced traffic which means more people are taking mass transit which is good for air quality/climate change.)
Trump gleefully announced his decision on social media—including a fabricated photo of himself on Time magazine wearing a crown with the words “Long live the King.”
That was it for Hochul who quickly held a press conference in Grand Central Terminal where she punched that wannabe monarch right in his orange face. A feisty Hocul declared, "President Donald Trump tweeted, 'Long live the king.' I’m here to say New York hasn’t labored under a king in over 250 years… And we sure as hell are not going to start now!" That line elicited cheers from people in Grand Central station.
From there, Hochul made it clear she is now in “fight mode” as she repeatedly jabbed Trump saying, “The streets of the city are where battles were fought, we stood up to a king, and we won then. In case you don’t know New Yorkers, when we’re in a fight, we do not back down — not now, not ever.”
You can watch a clip of Hochul punching the crap out of Trump below:
2. Former NFL punter Chris Kluwe punched not just Trump but all of MAGA in the face this week. What sparked this was that the right wing Huntington Beach Community and Library Services Commission in California proposed a $7,000 bronze plaque to mark the 50th anniversary of the library that included a salute to Trump’s Make America Great Again slogan with the words, “Magical. Alluring. Galvanizing. Adventurous.” (You get it: MAGA.)
Kluwe—who has a record of being a pro-American activist (which is what I call anyone who opposes Trump)—appeared at the local city council meeting on Tuesday to make it clear what MAGA and Trump truly stands for. Kluwe declared, “MAGA stands for resegregation and racism. MAGA stands for censorship and book bans…MAGA stands for hate, and fear, and the idea that we should have a king instead of co-equal branches of government.”
He continued, MAGA is an “unmistakably anti-democracy,” “a Nazi movement,” adding to cheers, “You may have replaced a swastika with a red hat, but that is what it is.” From there, the former Minnesota Viking announced he would engage in “time-honored American tradition of peaceful civil disobedience,” walking up to the dais and laying on the ground where he was arrested.
You can watch Kluwe’s rabid fire punches of Trump/MAGA below:
3. Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker used his state of the state address on Wednesday to lay out Trump and MAGA with a barrage of punches. Pritzker—who has been an outspoken fighter of Trump from Day one—first spoke about the traditional state of the state issues—such as job creation and creating a rainy day fund of more than $2 billion.
But then he got to the punching Trump in the face part. Pritzker began by rejecting the idea articulated by some “that if you just give Donald Trump everything he wants, he’ll make an exception and spare you some of the harm.”
He then reflected on his own Jewish faith and work with Holocaust survivors to raise comparisons between Trump and the fascism of Nazi Germany. The Governor declared, “I do not invoke the specter of Nazis lightly,” adding as a warning, “The seed that grew into a dictatorship in Europe a lifetime ago didn’t arrive overnight. It started with everyday Germans mad about inflation and looking for someone to blame.” (You can see two minutes of speech below or watch entire speech here.)
Pritzker then took dead aim at Trump, “I’m watching with a foreboding dread what is happening in our country right now” as he spoke of Trump’s recent actions. He warned, “The authoritarian playbook is laid bare here: They point to a group of people who don’t look like you and tell you to blame them for your problems.”
Later the Governor noted, “We don’t have kings in America – and I don’t intend to bend the knee to one.” He continued with these bone-chilling words, “It took the Nazis one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours and 40 minutes to dismantle a constitutional republic. All I’m saying is when the five-alarm fire starts to burn, every good person better be ready to man a post with a bucket of water if you want to stop it from raging out of control.”
Near the end of his speech, the Illinois Governor summed up what we are facing: “Tyranny requires your fear and your silence and your compliance. Democracy requires your courage.” That line conjures up for me the passage in Yale Professor Timothy Snyder book, “On Tyranny,” where he wrote, “If none of us is prepared to die for freedom, then all of us will die under tyranny.”
BONUS: Maine Gov. Janet Mills— (By popular demand after originally publishing this article) I wanted to add how Gov. Mills punched Trump in the face—while he was looking at her! The NY Times summed up what happened perfectly: “Something happened at the White House Friday afternoon that almost never happens these days. Somebody defied President Trump. Right to his face.” Actually Mills didn’t just defy Trump—she punched him square in his orange painted face.
The exchange came at a bipartisan meeting of governors when convicted felon Trump remembered about an hour into the meeting that Maine officials were refusing to follow his executive order banning transgender athletes from women’s sports. That is when Trump bellowed out, “Is Maine here? The governor of Maine?” (Trump’s brain is so mushed he can’t even recall the governors attending.) Mills responded she was there, to which Trump asked, “Are you not going to comply with that” executive order?
When Mills pointedly responded, “I’m complying with the state and federal laws,” the obviously angered Trump went on a temper tantrum, hysterically declaring “we are the federal law” and said that “you better do it” or else he would withhold funding from her state.
Did Mills back down? Nope, instead she defiantly told Trump, “See you in court.” That was some punch!
There was one other line that stayed me with from these fighters. And that is when Gov. Hochul was asked about whether she was changing her policy of “not poking the bear” when it comes with Trump. The defiant Hochul responded, “The bear’s been poked.”
In reality, it’s more accurate to say that the bear has been punched—repeatedly that is. And we need to see more of this every single day!
By popular demand I added Gov Janet Mills. She did in fact punch Trump in the face and deserves the recognition!
Maine governor Janet Mills, an older white woman being bullied by the freak at an official WH event. Socked him right in the kisser. But she stood alone. The crowd was silent. Cowards. We need to have the backs of those facing down the tyrant.