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"No oligarch, no monarch, no king," Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy told the crowd at the No Kings rally in Torrance, California, on March 28. "In the United States of America, the power is vested in the people of this nation—and all across this country today, people are coming out by the millions to say that the people are in charge, and Donald Trump is not going to rob us of our democracy."

Murphy, who just happened to be in Los Angeles for business and family, asked Indivisible organizers which protest to attend. He was there to warn that the current political situation was "as bad and as serious as you think it is" and made no effort to "sugarcoat" his message.

"We are not on the verge of an authoritarian takeover, we are in the middle of an authoritarian takeover," argued Murphy who has been arguing for months by now that we are in an active war to save the country from Trump. "Let's just be clear about the stakes."

Murphy accused Trump of trying to build a "censorship state" by targeting media voices he dislikes and approving mergers that put outlets in friendly hands. He claimed Trump is attempting to rig elections because he is deeply unpopular and faces resistance to policies like a $200 billion war with Iran.

The senator said he's fighting the SAVE Act, which he argued would "disenfranchise ten million Americans" by requiring voter ID, and trying to prevent voter data from being handed over to figures like Stephen Miller.

"Donald Trump is trying to bully you and me into silence," Murphy continued. He cited the handcuffing of one California senator and threats of jail against Sen. Adam Schiff for speaking out.

He urged the crowd to engage in daily civic action—putting "sand in the gears" of what he called a totalitarian effort—and warned that in the midterms, any member of Congress who aided or stood by as Trump tried to undermine democracy, "is not coming back to Congress."

"Donald Trump is trying to make us believe that we have something to fear from our neighbors, from first generation immigrants to this country," said Murphy. "And don't let him try to make you or anybody else believe that immigrants or undocumented immigrants are the greatest threat to our democracy, because we know that Donald Trump is the greatest threat to American democracy."

Murphy argued that Trump tries to "scapegoat immigrants or Muslim Americans or gay and transgender and non-binary kids" as a matter of distraction because this is the "most corrupt White House in the history of the country" as far as Murphy is concerned.

He said Trump, his family and friends were literally "stealing from us every single day" and promised that "at the end of this, some people are probably going to jail as well."

Despite waking up "every single day angry and anxious," Murphy said he also feels joy. He praised America’s unique success in combining self-determination and multiculturalism—"never before in the history of the world has a nation been able to do those two things together"—and said he is grateful to defend it at this historic moment.

"We have an opportunity to be together at moments like this to decide to engage in the actions that you have been given as homework so that we will be able to tell our children and our grandchildren that when American democracy... was at risk, maybe the gravest threat in our 250-year history, we stood up and saved this," he said.

Murphy highlighted a local attendee named Craig, who intervened during an immigration enforcement action at a car wash. "There are millions of Craigs all across this nation," he said. "Many of you had never joined a fight like this until this moment."

"You need to hold this president accountable," insisted Murphy. "But I feel that joy, I feel that joy because I don't take for granted that I get to be in the middle of this fight."

He closed by evoking the satisfaction and joy they would all feel for actively helping save American democracy.

This kind of inflammatory rhetoric—framing the moment as an active "authoritarian takeover" and existential threat—is precisely what critics say radicalized individuals like Cole Allen, the 31-year-old Torrance, CA, man who attended a No Kings protest and was later arrested and charged for attempted assassination at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

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