Someone called police on two black men doing gutter installations in Orchard Park

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 said he pardoned Changpeng Zhao, a billionaire who boosted a crypto company owned by the Trump family, because "a lot of people" said he was innocent.

During a Thursday Oval Office event, a reporter asked whether Zhao's pardon had anything to do with his family's World Liberty Financial crypto venture.

"I do pardon a lot of people," Trump replied. "A lot of people say that he wasn't guilty of anything. He served four months in jail, and they say that he was not guilty of anything."

"That what he did, well, you don't know much about crypto," he told the reporter. "You know nothing about nothing, you know, fake news. But let me just tell you that he was somebody that, as I was told, I don't know him. I don't believe I've ever met him. But I've been told by — a lot of support, he had a lot of support. And they said that what he did is not even a crime."

Trump claimed that Zhao had been "persecuted by the Biden administration," even though he pleaded guilty to violating U.S. anti-money-laundering requirements.

"So I gave him a pardon at the request of a lot of very good people," Trump concluded.