On the eve of the No Kings protest, I’d like to share my conversation with Lincoln Square’s Stuart Stevens, both an astute political observer and a former Republican strategist who authored a powerful and necessary indictment of the Republican Party entitled It Was All a Lie.
I’d also like to share the summary of our conversation from Lincoln Square:
Steven Beschloss called this moment what it is: a reckoning. “You have to wake up in the morning convinced that I have to say something, I have to do something, while there’s still a chance to make a difference.” His urgency framed the No Kings protests not as an act of defiance, but as an act of preservation—of citizenship, of decency, of hope. The cynics may sneer and call it a hate-America rally, but Beschloss sees the opposite: millions asserting that democracy belongs to the people, not the demagogues.
Stuart has lived the collapse from the inside. “Trump didn’t hijack the party—he revealed it,” he said, tracing the lineage from McCarthy to MAGA. What once called itself the “party of Lincoln” is now a vehicle for fear and purity tests, where acknowledging a free election is grounds for exile. Yet Stevens insists that Democrats hold the only viable banner of patriotism left. The task now, he argues, isn’t to compromise but to oppose—fully, morally, and without apology.
What emerged between them wasn’t nostalgia for a saner politics but a blueprint for resistance. They talked about boycotts, state defense forces, and economic leverage—real mechanisms for power in a federal system where blue states fund red ones that mock them. Behind the policy was a larger point: strength must be reclaimed as a democratic virtue. Courage, not civility, will decide whether this country survives its authoritarian drift.
I hope you find our conversation of value. And I hope it may motivate you to participate at the No Kings protest Saturday and to continue to speak out in the weeks and months ahead.
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