Santaland Back at Chestnut Ridge

The Republican response to this weekend's massive No Kings demonstrations showed they're ready to crown President Donald Trump as absolute ruler, an analyst wrote Monday.

The president dismissed the protests, which drew an estimated 7 million people at 2,600 events nationwide, as "very small, very ineffective," posted AI-generated video of himself dumping feces on attendees' heads and threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act.

But Salon's Sophia Tesfaye argued the GOP response was even more revealing.

"The right’s response to No Kings wasn’t just politically telling. It was conceptually damning," Tesfaye wrote. "If a protest warns that someone is behaving like a king, and the accused responds by laughing, wearing a crown and declaring 'You’re just mad I’m winning' — you have your answer."

Vice President JD Vance shared a doctored video of Trump placing a crown on his head while Democratic leaders bowed, and the White House official account shared his post. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) claimed the protesters "hate America" and wanted to "dismantle capitalism" and "erase our founding principles.”

"He may not be a king by law," Tesfaye wrote. "But in posture, and in the eyes of his defenders, Donald Trump already wears the crown. So he wants to define criticism as disloyalty. Mike Johnson wants to define protest as hate. Fox News wants to define mass mobilization as marginal. And yet none of it is working."

Millions protested Saturday against the president and his policies, but Tesfaye said the Republican reaction shows why those demonstrations are necessary to preserve democracy.

"The important questions now aren’t whether Trump will continue to act like a king," Tesfaye wrote. "They are whether the right can continue to pretend he isn’t — and if the press will let Republicans claim they haven’t seen Trump’s absurd reaction before he abuses his power to exact revenge."

President Donald Trump sought to target Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) after the lawmaker served on the House select committee that investigated the Jan. 6 probe and worked on both impeachment cases. That effort has reportedly hit a brick wall, however.

Last week, MSNBC revealed that the Maryland prosecutor who went after former National Security Advisor John Bolton was stuck on the Schiff case, so she pivoted to focus more on Bolton. Now it appears the Schiff case has stalled entirely.

Writing Thursday, Ryan J. Reilly, Kristen Welker, Michael Kosnar and Carol E. Lee wrote for NBC News that the investigation “came to a standstill," according to a federal law enforcement official.

U.S. Attorney Kelly Hayes reportedly met with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche earlier this week to ask how to move forward without the goods on Schiff.

"The decision out of that meeting was for Hayes to pursue more evidence, and the case remains ongoing," reported NBC, citing one of the sources.

Schiff has retained former Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara as his counsel.

In a statement to NBC News, Bharara said: “It seems pretty clear that a team of career prosecutors have thoroughly reviewed the politically-motivated allegations against Senator Schiff and found they are unsupported by any evidence and are baseless.”

“The transparently vindictive effort to pursue the Senator has no merit, and if there is any justice left in the Justice Department, this should be the end of the matter,” he added.

Read the full report here.