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Thank you very much. It's so nice of you to all be here. I'm Rick Steves. Normally I'm talking about travel, but right now we're talking about something I think far more important. It's important to all of us. You know I travel a lot. And I learn a lot about my home by leaving it and looking at it from a distance. All my life, and I've spent a quarter of my adult life living out of a 9 by 22 by 14-in carry-on the airplane size suitcase. All my life I've come home and I've appreciated our freedom and our democracy and good governance. As much as I love Europe, I am so thankful to be an American.
What I see happening lately scares me. It really scares me. The mega movement is literally dismantling our American way of life. And what seems like just chaos and a reckless sort of destruction is actually a carefully planned out intentional step-by-step reordering of our society. They know what they're doing. It's reordering our society and it's threatening the entire world order. On this very stage little while ago Mr. Joyful Blues, Elvin Bishop was here himself to a crowd this big singing his songs. And one of his main songs, he rewrote the lyrics to fit what's going on right now in our country. And that song is What the hell's going on? And we all sang in a thunderous unison People want to know.
We're gathering today on the 250th year of our American democracy hungry for the intangible value of being together as our community shares a determination to stop this coup to remain free and democratic. We've never had to do this before in our lifetimes. Across the USA there's a crescendo of concern. People are rising up. They're waking up and they're asking what the hell is going on. Right here in Edmonds. I mean we just announced this and there's 2,000 people that signed up to spend their Friday evening together inspiring each other. There's an intangible value of getting together.
Now I'm a traveler and I'm a historian. And I think that gives me a unique appreciation of what makes America great. Drawing on that experience, I appreciate what we have and I also know what we can lose. Think about things that we often take for granted. Good governance. Stability. The rule of law. The importance of honoring societal norms. These are important blessings and they are undervalued in normal times. We've skated right through in our lifetime. This is fundamental to really what does make America great. Now our president is taking us I believe into a sad future. Not America first but America intimidated.
America alone. So here we are defending the best way we can a democracy that we didn't realize could be so fragile. Now I'm standing here on stage saying a lot of things that you guys already know. But we're together and there's some intangible value of us hearing it together to verbalize it. Our solidarity. Solidarity matters. Freedom is the right to speak truth to power. And tonight we are exercising our Now, this is not America-bashing. This is America-loving. I'm wearing my purple shirt. Because it's time, as far as I'm concerned, to mix blue and red together. We need to speak out not as partisans, but as patriots. And if somebody puts you or me down because we're saying something that seems awfully liberal,
don't stand for it. This is not a partisan squabble. This is more fundamental than that. This is a matter of freedom, democracy, and we are patriots. Our country is roughly divided 50/50. It's half conservative, half liberal, half Democrats, half Republicans. And I'm okay with that. I'm very comfortable with that. In fact, I miss the healthy debate between practical Republicans and idealistic Democrats. It's good for democracy. In fact, I hope and pray for a return to that healthy political discourse. But notice right now how MAGA world, in that world, the Republican Party is fading away.
It's becoming MAGA. MAGA Republicans have hijacked the GOP. And today, our country is paying a price. So, this is not a partisan talk. I believe it's as pro-American as you could be. This dictator thing is snowballing. It's a coup that's happening now. It's underway. I've long comforted my thought myself with the thought that well, at least we're not in a war. This is a war. It's not overseas, but it's from within.
It is ripping at our society in ways more destructive than a bomb. Trump actually calls us the enemy from within. His troops are literally in the streets. We read it in the tragic headlines every night. Minneapolis, that's a dress rehearsal, a springboard for a nationwide agenda of military intimidation. Maybe planning for the midterms, who knows. They got the money. They got endless money. We're doing little fundraisers. They just write the check. They got the advertising.
They're building a very icy army. I often wondered how Hitler found his Gestapo. I didn't know there were so many hateful and violent Germans. Where are they now? Where were they before Hitler? It's latent. It's in there. It's in our country, too. There are frustrated people who just love to have a gun. And be thugs against people who are different than them. We're learning. Imagine in the United States it's become scary to speak out. Professors, teachers, journalists, local leaders, regular citizens actually scared.
Calculating not should we say this, but is it safe to say this? It's amazing to me. When I give a talk, and it's hard for me to give a straight travel talk these days all over the country, I have to spice it up with a little politics. When I go into the lobby after a talk, people tell me, "Thank you. I needed to hear that on stage. It's courageous for you to be speaking out." Hey, if it's courageous for me to be speaking out, that's reason enough right there to speak out. I can't believe we're in a situation like that.
When it comes to free speech, it's clear to me it's use it or lose it. Mega Republicans believe America needs one supreme leader more than a democracy. Trump's all in for that. He's acting more and more like that supreme leader with somebody else's Nobel Peace Prize in his pocket. A gilded ballroom nearly twice the size of our White House is under construction. What's next? A dollar coin with Trump's face on it?
Buckle up, Mount Rushmore. History is not just speaking to it. I think it's screaming at us. Now, I'm a historian. I know democracies can be fragile. They come and they go. As Americans are learning, our nation can slide sleekly sneakily almost unnoticed into authoritarianism. History teaches us want-to-be autocrats intent on derailing a democracy have all used the same what's called a dictator's playbook. The USA playbook, it's even got a name. Project 2025. A century ago, Germany employed the same step-by-step plan to accomplish what could be written up in a book that they had, not that they did, but it would be called Project Neunzehnhundertdreiunddreißig.
In 1933, Hitler was made Chancellor of Germany. 18 months later, following this playbook, total dictatorship. Step-by-step, political parties banned, no more democracy, absolute power in one man. Mussolini, Putin, Orbán, Erdoğan, strong men appreciate and admire strong men. Ours certainly does. And they all follow the same playbook. Imagine comparing notes. Imagine the conversations they must have. Today, our president, the world's most powerful man, emboldens autocrats from Moscow to Saudi Arabia to El Salvador. And he's increasingly seen around the world as an autocrat himself. Consider the countries that were attracted to his board of peace.
Armenia, Azerbaijan, Hungary, Israel, they all signed up right away. Dictators by definition are enemies of the ideals that truly make America great. Ideals that for over two centuries have inspired and fostered freedom all around this planet. Ideals that inspired French people and German people after World War II to name their children Frankie and Johnny. Frankie and Johnny, a couple years older than me, named in the late 1940s. Not Francois and Johann, Frankie spelled that way.
Johnny, why? Their parents were so blown away by the admirable qualities of the United States in the family of nations. Not today. This is amazing what we've done in the space of a couple of years because of the price of eggs, or I don't know what's going on, but this is really a challenge for us. Let's consider these ideals and their place today in the home of the brave and the land of the free. I'm just going to say these ideals. We've been talking about ideals. I did some study. Liberty, equality, self-government, rule of law, individual rights, opportunity, upward mobility, justice, and pluralism.
It's an ideal that different groups can coexist with equal rights. It's an ideal that different groups can share one country without forced conformity. pluralism That's a beautiful thing. It's a beautiful thing. These ideals are embattled in an oligarchy gone wild. I mean, in the United States today, this is the most income inequality we have ever had.
You've heard it before. The top 1% have more wealth than the bottom 90% of us. Three men, you saw them at the inauguration, have more wealth than half of all Americans combined. Three men have more wealth than 160 million of us. And who's calling the shots? They are. Hello. Buying the US government is cheap for oligarchs. For half a billion dollars, think what you can do. When you got 20 billion dollars, what is half a billion? It's it's kid stuff. The result? Corruption running rampant. Our president's salary is $400,000 a year. In the last year, very conservatively, Trump made 1 billion dollars. That's 2,500 years of his salary. In 1 year, with no apologies.
This is the new American way. Now, our founding fathers, when they designed our government, they made three estates. Executive, legislative, and judiciary. And they wrote about something they nicknamed the fourth estate, media and journalism. That's the watchdog on power. When the oligarchs are frustrated by what the people are doing and what the other estates are doing, what do oligarchs do? Boy, that's a frustrating hurdle. You buy it. Think of the big change in media. Why do they Why don't they just get back to buying football teams? Because they want power. Billionaires, Zuckerberg, Musk, Bezos, Ellison, they own the media. Authoritarianism.
Buy the media, you control the political system. Taxation and regulations, that's what they care about. They write the code. And we don't do much. Buy the media. Control the political system. Think about the dictator's playbook. That could be the name of the TV show I produced 7 years ago called the story of fascism in Europe. Watch it if you haven't seen it. It's on defunded PBS. Or it's at ricksteves.com. It's a 1-hour show, 7,000 words, not a single word or explicit image about Trump.
It wasn't needed. The message is clear. 100 years after Europe's fascist nightmare, history is repeating itself or risking to repeat itself right here. Now, the dictator's playbook, it's like a checklist. It's fascinating. I'm just going to list 15 points. Bear with me, but 15 points that Mussolini, Hitler, Franco, fill in the blank, they all employed. Consider these points historically and consider them today in our country. One, a supreme leader who demands public rituals of loyalty, requiring praise and punishing disrespect.
Check. Thank you. Two, simple solutions to complex problems. With me in power, we'll end the war in Ukraine in 1 day. Check. civil society. Go after the unions, nonprofits, watchdogs. Label protest groups as enemies of the state. Pastors in the street are domestic terrorists. Control the bureaucracy. In other words, purge the deep state. Fire career experts. Replace them with loyalist ideologues. Create a class of scapegoats and then dehumanize them so no one cares when they disappear. Hitler had his Jews, Trump's got immigrants. He called them vermin, little more than animals, in preparation for us to not really think of it as a bad thing.
Use the fear of immigrants to create a permanent emergency to justify high levels of detention and surveillance. Manufacture a law and an order crisis in order to provoke unrest and then use that as an excuse for a crackdown. Twin Cities. Attack and discredit elections. Unless I win, they're rigged. Shut down the serious press, control media, target broadcast journalism. Why is PBS and NPR in the crosshairs of this president? Well, I'll tell you. In 1920, Vladimir Lenin in the USSR was a consummate dictator. Just like Trump has Truth Social, Lenin had a newspaper called The Truth. Pravda. In fact, in the USSR, there were always two big state-run newspapers. Pravda, that means the truth, and Izvestia, that means the news.
And for generations, Russians knew it. The saying was, "There's no truth in the news, and there's no news in the truth." Take advantage of a tragedy or an emergency to consolidate power and answer to a wannabe dictator's prayer. Hitler had his Reichstag fire, a perfect excuse to crush the Communist Party, to lock up Germany's liberals. He flooded the streets with storm troopers, Germany's ICE, and he implemented the Enabling Act because of that one disaster. Stay tuned. Trump is aching for an excuse to invoke the Insurrection Act, just like Germany's Enabling Act.
Militarize cities, silence opposition, intimidate voters. Imagine, suddenly we're all domestic terrorists. Seek retribution. Lock up political enemies. Hitler's first inmates in the concentration camps were not Jews. They were his political opponents, the Liz Cheneys, Adam Schiffs, Bernie Sanders of the 1930s in Germany. They were household names. In 1933, they were locked up. Today, the mayor of Istanbul is in prison. He's the one politician in Turkey with the stature and the charisma to stand up against Erdogan and lock him up. I was there in Turkey. Million
people in the streets demonstrating. It's a dictator's tool. Lock him up. It's not just a silly rally chant. We've got to wake up to these things. They're He's not just joking. He's breaking the ice. He's getting us used to it, not taking it seriously, distracted. It's a great, great program what they've got going if you want to derail a democracy. Weaponize the Department of Justice to protect allies and punish enemies. Pam Bondi. Build a military a paramilitary force. Every dictator needs a private police force. Ours wears masks but no uniforms. ICE is loyal to a president, not a constitution. And ICE today is the best funded federal police force in the
entire country at the service of the executive branch. Check. Two more checks coming. Target education and history. Ban unpatriotic teaching. Attack universities and professors. And the last one, intimidation. Big check. Big check. Intimidation. It's a favorite tool for keeping people down. I think of America as a word, the word of the year for 2026, I think it might be intimidation. Mussolini originated the term fascist. He was the original fascist. His thugs intimidated Italy. They literally beat their way into power. I mean, talk about intimidation. He would put his thugs at polling stations on voting day and they'd beat up the first
person who voted. Just saying. Well, how does that intimidate people? Not everybody wishes they had more than one life to give for their country. Medieval Europe, it had the same thing going on. Kings put bloody heads of problem people on pikes at the city gate, left there to rot. Everybody who walked in and everybody who walked out, they saw that and they were intimidated. Trump's acts of retribution, they are publicity stunts. Views of hellish prisons, you'd think he'd want to keep that down. No. That's great TV. Innocent victims of ICE videoed in the streets, dragged into the snow wearing nothing more than underwear
and a blanket, blasted with tear gas from a few inches away, all happy to show it. Put it up on the TV. Let our publicity intimidate the populace, just like those heads left to rot on public pikes a thousand years ago all across Europe. The American public is being conned by the ultimate con artist. He may be cognitively challenged, but right-wing think tanks are brilliant. Beware. They are ingeniously framing issues to confuse the public. The very institutions that make America great are denigrated. Deep state, boy, that's a menacing thing, teed up for destruction. Environmentalists, now we're called climate extremists. Sounds pretty evil, discredited. Our richest elites, oh, they are job creators.
What a flattering title, reminding us that they deserve their tax breaks. Beautiful tariffs. They're not beautiful, they're a hidden tax. It happens to be the billionaire's favorite tax, regressive as can be, taxing not wealth, but consumption. What day did those beautiful tariffs take effect? Liberation Day. You say it enough times and people just oh yeah, that was Liberation Day. Clever deceiving messaging, think about it. Pro-life. A right-to-work state, school choice, clean coal, the big beautiful bill. It's so like obvious and in your face you'd think it wouldn't work, but it works.
It works on and on, it sounds wonderful. But whether designed by a Joseph Goebbels, a Stephen Miller, or a Heritage Foundation think tank, when it serves an autocrat, these are marketing terms. Deceptive. They mean just the opposite, they're designed to dupe the public. When mega Republicans frame it, if America buys it, you can say goodbye to our freedom. Fascists tell lies with gusto. And with mega lies, they're coming they're becoming the norm. I mean, think about it. We won't touch your Medicare. We won't touch your Social Security. We need to strip away Obamacare because undocumented
immigrants are freeloading on it. Trump says, I didn't know anything about project What was it? Project 20-something, 2025. January 6th, peaceful demonstration. No, we saw the video. Rene Good, a domestic terrorist trying to run down an ICE officer with her car. No, we saw the video. Alex Pretty drew his gun. No, he didn't. We saw the video. Portland's burning? Uh-uh, saw the video.
Demonstrators are overrunning Minneapolis and they're paid for by the radical left. And the ultimate, which I guess some people believe, the immigrants are eating our cats. Well, there's one lie going around that it's Christian nationalism. Christian nationalism is the distortion of the Christian faith and it has nothing to do with anything Jesus actually taught. For a Christian nationalist, love thy neighbor is trumped by racism, greed, and the pursuit of power. By the way, it's not unique to Christianity or Christendom. Arab dictators employ Muslim nationalism, Indian autocrats employ Hindu nationalism, Christian Nazis 100 years ago in Germany,
they celebrated Jesus as an Aryan hero. Beware when a politician hugs a flag next to your altar, he's co-opting your faith and using it against your freedom. We need to recognize Christian nationalism for what it is. It's the dishonest perversion of our faith designed to steal our democracy. Tonight, I'm the warm-up act for this important topic and part two is going to be a powerful message from Bishop Shelley Bryan Wee. As I mentioned, she's the Bishop of the Northwest Washington Synod of the ELCA, the leader of about 120 Lutheran
churches in this region. And the title of her message is Christian nationalism is not Christian and it's not patriotic. Another lie, the deep state is the enemy. The deep state is the very institutions that make our society work, that make us strong and more equitable. Yes. Institutions are what stand between our elites and more power. The agenda of our president today, discredit and then shut down these institutions. It's what fascists do. It's what their corporate funders want. When they shut down the scientist, the professor, the principal judge, the
doctor, the military leader who's loyal to a constitution and not a dictator, when they shut down public servants from school counselors to national park rangers to air traffic controllers and those who care about our environment, they shut down what makes our society strong and safe and free. They may be popular with the mega base and they may be good for quarterly profit statements of Trump's billionaire buddies, but they are not good for our children's quality of life. Our kids are going to inherit the long-term consequences of Trump's mega pleasing and oligarch friendly power grab. Consider the climate.
Consider the environment. Consider public health. Consider unchecked racism. Consider the loss of civil liberties and the rise of corporate influence. You name it. Without the institutions that define and defend our American democracy, these losses will be baked in. So, what do the best run and most content countries on this planet have in common? I've seen it. Countries like Norway and Denmark. Well, trust in institutions. That's it. Trust in institutions. It's a fundamental difference.
You got to pay for them. You got to put up with them when they're not perfect. You got to make them better and you got to embrace them. That's how a society works. Trump's goal from the very start is to ruin our trust in institutions and he's great at it. From condemning the failing New York Times to rescuing what was the DEI plagued Kennedy Center to the dismemberment of the corrupt and incompetent USAID. Think of what they've done to the reputations of those places so we could swallow the fact that they're no longer with us.
Suddenly, with Trump, the hard working, mission driven professionals who run these institutions are all radical left-wing lunatics. Our society is going to pay a deep price for the destruction or the hollowing out of these institutions. I mean, just think about USAID for one. This is a particularly heartbreaking thing for me. Dismantled and destroyed to save $40 billion. The cost? Well, you don't feel a lot of it here, maybe, if you're a privileged white person in South Snohomish County. But if you live south of the border,
you know the cost. In the poorest parts of our world, more starvation, child mortality spiking, AIDS in Africa on the rise, and on. A very conservative estimate of 600,000 preventable deaths from disease and hunger just in the first year of the end of USAID. By the party of life, or whatever you call it, you know. Millions more deaths are on the way. Countries, entire countries are destabilized. This is ironic because Trump's base is so afraid of refugees.
We're just creating more desperate immigrants. Failing states, when you have failing states, you have a rise in authoritarian rulers, you got more extremism and more organized crime. These are the consequences of the end of USAID in order for us to save a few billion dollars, and it's not a pretty picture. Public wealth is another thing that we as the electorate and citizenry need to appreciate. It's another dimension of America that's definitely targeted by our president.
Public wealth, that's our parks, public lands, our schools, social security, Medicaid, public broadcasting, our infrastructure. Why does Trump target everything I hold so dear? It's uncanny. Public wealth, it's a lost opportunity if you are a greedy corporation. The mindset of anybody who's just a corporate leader without any values would be privatize it so I can make money on it. Privatize everything. Prisons for profit. What a brilliant idea. Toll roads, VIP lanes on the internet. Those with money go faster. And why this dogged fixation on destroying Obamacare? Because if you privatize health care,
there's more pain for poor people, sure, but there's a lot more wealth for the billionaire class. Publicly funded medical research. On a personal note, I'm here today a year after robotic prostate cancer surgery, cancer-free thanks to taxpayer-funded medical research. How many of you have benefited from or have a loved one who's benefited from government-funded medical research? Do you know anybody?
Think of what heroics it takes to squeeze billions of dollars into the billionaire class who already can't So, you got to squeeze this stuff out of your society. We can't afford medical research. Well, if we're going to enrich our already rich people, maybe that's the case. Mega Republicans are hell-bent on defunding, shrinking our government, not to save money, but to empower the billionaire class. With their cuts, Republicans are saving billions, maybe, but they're giving away trillions in tax cuts to the rich, while they claim to be cutting the deficit. Either it's an intentional lie or they need to learn some arithmetic.
The real goal, fewer regulations for corporations and bacon tax cuts for the already wealthy. This has been a Republican dream for decades. Do you remember 25 years ago or so there was a popular GOP slogan, "We'll shrink government until it's so small it'll fit into a bathtub. And then we'll drown it. And all the big shots giggled. Well, they've been frustrated. They have not been able to do that for a long time because every time they overreach, we elect a Democrat and they straighten it out and then it goes back, you know. But finally, with project 2025, they found a solution.
Simply steal the power of the purse, which belongs to Congress. And shrink our government by executive order. That's the breakthrough. And it's pretty powerful. If you honestly want to cut and balance our budget, you don't do it by cutting food stamps or Consumer Protection Bureau or the IRS or PBS. That's not how you cut the deficit. That's just an excuse to defund programs that Congress funded that oligarchs find annoying. By the way, capitalism is a reality. I love it. I'm pretty good at it. Fact I bet half of you have taken my tours. But it needs a referee.
It needs a referee and you got a choice. There's two options. Capitalism can be refereed by the people's government or by corporations regulating themselves. You choose. You're the electorate. Don't let any advertising campaign convince you otherwise of the common sense answer there. The real MAGA agenda, well, read the big beautiful bill. It's plain and simple. No government referee in the rough and tumble arena of the free market. And tax breaks for the rich paid for by cutting services that poor and working people need. Big, yeah. Beautiful, no.
The big beautiful bill is the biggest transfer of wealth from working people to the idle rich in our lifetimes. Trillions of dollars not trickling down, but flooding up to the already wealthy. In a healthy democracy, there's a thriving middle class and loyalty goes to a constitution, not to a wanna-be autocrat. Our founding fathers anticipated the pickle we're in today. They created a defense in our constitution to exactly what we're in right now. Checks and balances, legislative branch with the power of the purse, independent courts to enforce the rule of law. It's all structural. The foundations of what we know of as America right there in our administration knows it and they know if
they get rid of these safeguards, it's easy to pull down the entire house of our democracy. Things are moving fast. Trump and his gang are on the verge of succeeding. They're playing hardball and they know they got to bake it in because the title swing. They got to bake it in. While we're distracted by the latest in a chaotic parade of crazy Trump news, smart people are working late at night, every night, employing Project 2025 on us, all 900 pages of it. So, what do we do? With the GOP in control of all three branches of our government, it's pretty tough.
We got midterms coming up later this year. It's critical. It might be a last chance. And heads-up, the anti-democracy brains behind our president know it. It's going to be a very creative political season. It's not all about Trump. Three or four Republican patriots in the House and Senate could rescue our democracy. To win, we need some takeaways. I'm just trying to figure out some practical takeaways. What can we do? Embrace uncomfortable coalitions, both center and left working together. The political left needs the middle. It cannot be 100% pure and win or make lasting change. I'm sorry. It's just There's a reality. We got to share our
political arena with the half of our society that is hell-bent on not agreeing with us. Two, a broad society-wide resistance movement is needed to stop this coup. Three, we're each influential in our own realm. Be active in your lane where you have some standing. A good example is if you are a Rotarian, read your guiding statements, the wonderful four-way test, and then call on your fellow Rotarians to be true to it in public or change it. As long as the Rotarians have that four-way test and they say it all the time and they don't speak out about the exact opposite of that's going on in our society right now, I don't want my faith in Rotarians to be
challenged, but that's not a good situation. Empower existing organizations with your support. Believe that you can make a difference. When we rally and speak out, do it boldly. We can create an ongoing ever-stronger grassroots opposition. Critical, we need to be nonviolent. Don't take the bait. They're looking for an excuse to declare an emergency. This is flat-out lessons from history. They're eager to have an excuse. The troops are primed and ready. Do not obey in advance. Fascists love it when you're intimidated into complying voluntarily. Stand firm on things you care about early. It's easier to resist before the authoritarian control is
established. And above all, we need to be in solidarity. I was so inspired by that in my youth when I went down to Central America or I went to Russia and I saw people in solidarity against unthinkable powers. Remember the shipyard workers in Poland standing so strong against the USSR? Remember the Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians literally joining hands and stretching across the Baltics to protest and ultimately bring down the Soviet Union. Consider the solidarity we just saw a couple weeks ago and as the EU stood up to Trump's take on Greenland. It worked. Solidarity can reveal the weakness in a wannabe strong man even as he resorts to more lies and declares victory.
I believe Project 2025 assumed no solidarity out of the American electorate. And they realized that it's a prerequisite for them to accomplish their goals for us to not be in solidarity. Solidarity breeds courage and courage is contagious. We need solidarity in the USA. Focus on one issue, saving democracy. Saving democracy because without democracy we have nothing. We can do this. Remember, power perceived is power achieved. Now is the time. We're going to wake up, but we need to wake up now.
Generations of courageous patriotic veterans have protected our freedom at great cost. Think about it. Our shows of appreciation for our for our heroic veterans are a total sham if we let our democracy slip away. If you care about your veterans, you've got to stand up now when it's here. Most of us have never had to fight for freedom. It's just been a gift. Today, we're in a battle for our freedom and we are the troops.
It's our turn to defend our freedom. Trump may think everything has a price. He loves to say "I'm going to do this and give everybody $1,000." That is so insulting. But just like Greenland, our democracy is not for sale regardless of the cost of eggs. Our civil liberties, our freedoms, our American ideals are not for sale. Now, there's going to be a lot of rallies across the United States in the coming year. Put March 28th on your calendar. I think that's going to be a biggie. These will embolden our citizenry making it clear that we are not alone. There's some intangible value of that. We are not alone. Look at us here. This is so great. We need to embolden our legislators to be brave, to grow a little red, white, and blue spine.
We need to show Republican legislators that the real list real risk to their beloved power is not to be primary from the right, but to be primary from the center by citizens who are conservative, but also pro-democracy. Again, three or four Republicans in the House and Senate could rescue democracy and end this nightmare. Project 2025 is not a bad dream. It is not a possibility. It is real. It's serious. It's smart. It's a determined blueprint, and it's happening now. Our very democracy is on the line. The Oval Office, look at it. It's draped in golden bling, royal bling. It's a metaphor. Our president is no servant of the people.
I've seen these palaces. They don't belong in our country. Trump administration is waging war in America, killing our nation's heart and soul from within, and it has got to be stopped. The people who understand this are not a lunatic far left fringe. We are American citizens. Democrats, Republicans, independents, we're patriots. Patriots, and we're waking up and mobilizing for an America that is of, by, and for the people. That's you and me. The people. Thank you.
Defense!
