‘We don’t have kings in America’: Trump’s self-appointed kingship is slammed by an outspoken state governor
If there’s one unbreakable tenet in the American constitution; one that stands above all others, it’s that the country will never have a king. This country was founded on the principle of never having a monarchy and always being a democratic society, but President Donald Trump dented that idea when he quoted Napoleon Bonaparte and subsequently compared himself to a monarch. In a recent speech, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker pushed back hard.
Pritzker was giving his State of the State address recently and said one thing very clearly: “We don’t have kings in America,” adding that he refuses to “bend the knee to one.” Interestingly, just minutes later, Trump called himself a king on Truth Social.
“CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD. Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED,” he wrote. “LONG LIVE THE KING!” The White House took that message and added a visual element, with the President wearing a crown on a magazine cover that looks a lot like Time Magazine.
This is of course in addition to a previous post when he quoted French Emperor Napoleon, writing that “he who saves his Country violates no Law.”
Pritzker also took aim at the rampant cost cutting going on in the federal government by Trump and his sidekick Elon Musk, claiming that Illinois can’t “make up for the damage” dsone to the budget. He added that it’s not only blue states feeling the pinch, but red states as well.
Pritzker is an outspoken anti-Nazi crusader in the state, and Illinois is about as blue a state as you can get. Pritzker was instrumental in creating the Holocaust Museum and Education Center, and in his speech touched on an event that happened in 1978 in Skokie, which is known to have a number of holocaust survivors. There were a group of neo-nazis who attempted to march in the area, but they eventually decided to move the demonstration to downtown Chicago after pressure from the community.
In his speech, Pritzker warned about the creeping edifice of fascism and how it begins as a “seed of distrust hate and blame” that “tears apart your house’s foundation.” People in Europe didn’t accept Hitler overnight, he said, but instead it started with “everyday Germans mad about inflation” and wanting to pin the blame on someone.
He also said he was watching it happen “in our country” and he couldn’t help but feel a “foreboding dread.” It should be noted, he remarked, that Nazis took down Germany’s “constitutional republic” in less than two months.
If things get out of control and a “five-alarm fire starts to burn,” then everyone needs to be ready with a bucket of water to stop that fire from “raging out of control.” On the most recent Presidents’ Day, it looked like people were trying to do just that. Thousands of people took to the U.S. Capitol on the National Mall in Washington and chanted, “No king, no crown, we will not back down.” Many waved American flags and wore earrings and beanies with the flag on it. And a cappella group did a version of the Star Spangled Banner by the reflecting pool and the crown erupted in applause when it was over.
Pritzker ended his heroic speech with some wise words: “Tyranny requires your fear and your silence and your compliance. Democracy requires your courage.” He urged the people of Illinois to “not let the tragic spirit of despair overcome us when our country needs us the most.”
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