This is the Daily Blast from the New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network.

I'm your host, Greg Sargent.

In the days leading up to the No King's protests, President Trump and Republicans widely derided the protesters as extremists, criminals, and terrorists.

Then the protests actually happened.

They were a wild success, peaceful, enormous, and representative of a very wide swath of American society.

So what did Republicans do in response?

They just kept on calling the protesters, criminals, and terrorists.

Republicans only seemed able to talk to their own base about these extraordinary events.

And in his response, Trump accidentally revealed in his own way that the protests had actually succeeded.

Writer Anna Marie Cox has a great piece for the New Republic reporting on what the protests

looked like in a red county in Texas, an area that just happens to be represented by MAGA

Republican Chip Roy, who had his own deranged response to them. So we're talking to her about

all this today. Anna, thanks for coming on. Hi, it's good to be here.

So data analyst G. Eliot Morris estimates that well over 4 million people and possibly as many as 6 million people turned out at these protests nationwide.

That's within striking distance of what the organizers say, which is that 7 million turned out.

Regardless, Morris thinks this was the biggest single-day protest event in over half a century at least.

Anna, can you tell us where you were and what you saw?

Yes.

I was in New Bronfels, Texas, which is about halfway between here in San Antonio.

I'm in Austin.

And although the whole I-35 corridor has gotten pretty suburban and blue, this is a red district.

It's represented by Chimperoy, as you said.

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