Gov Who Might Become President Solely Due to Family Name and Hereditary Wealth Declares, Hilariously, 'We Do Not Have Kings'
Thank ye heavens: Due to massive throngs of purple-haired octogenarians still holding a grudge over Kent State, Saturday’s “No Kings” day protests ensured that, for the 91,213th day since July 4, 1776, we had no kings. Phew. We made it, y’all.
Here I was, sweating away that Saturday was going to be the day it all ended. But no — thanks to a bunch of Jane Fonda types, including Hanoi Jane herself, we made sure that the streak would hit 91,214. Thank a Karen when you see one today, if she’s not too busy with the manager.
Obviously, there was plenty of fatuity to be had regarding the astroturfed “No Kings” protests if you wanted to look even mildly hard for it.
Organizers claimed millions of people across over 3,100 events, according to The Associated Press, although many on social media noted that how these numbers may have been achieved were likely due to sleight of hand:
Here’s how communist PR deception works:
They have two protests minutes away from each other, but one protest starts 2.5 hours after the other ends.
The media is an ally, so they will report massive attendance at both without admitting it’s the same people. https://t.co/8nvQTpWHuS pic.twitter.com/92EzktD24l
— Oilfield Rando (@Oilfield_Rando) March 28, 2026
However, the most hilarious aspect of this was one of the top 2028 contenders — who has succeeded in politics thanks to nothing more than hereditary lineage and wealth — using the occasion to boldly proclaim “we do not have kings in America.”
Now, granted, every American politician was supposed to genuflect at the “No Kings” rally-goers, since that was the big story the media lapped up over the weekend.
However, of all the people who should have been more careful with his messaging, none had a trickier high-wire to walk on than Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, all but a declared candidate for the 2028 campaign.
Instead, he put out this statement on social media:
NO KINGS. pic.twitter.com/GivZEktZJO
— JB Pritzker (@JBPritzker) March 28, 2026
Now, aside from the obvious — he seems to have lost a bit of weight these days, but I’m not sure Pritzker should bend the knee at anything even if he wanted to — there’s also the slightly less obvious but way more pertinent irony here.
Pritzker is the latest in a long dynasty that’s held a prominent position in the American business world since the 1800s, and really struck it big during the expansion of the Hyatt Hotels chain during the 1900s.
It’s currently the sixth-richest family in America, according to Forbes, with a net worth of $41.6 billion in 2024. That makes them richer than the Hearsts, Du Ponts, and Rockefellers. (And yes, obviously, the Trumps.)
The amount that J.B. contributed to this private-sector success is nebulous at best; if one wished to be flippant (but probably more accurate than not), his main contribution seems to have been not taking up a $10,000-a-day cocaine habit or something similarly wasteful.
By profession, he started out as an expensively educated attorney of undistinguished litigious success who set himself up first as a staffer on Capitol Hill and then in political action committees of dubious usefulness aside from résumé-building.
One of these, for example was called Democratic Leadership for the 21st Century — which tried to sell the Democratic Party to 18-to-29-year-olds, according to a 1991 article by The New York Times. This is much like selling a Double Whopper to J.B. Pritzker, but it gave a member of the idle rich a little less idleness to deal with.
Then, Pritzker started trying to set about securing elected office — something that proved harder than it should have been, considering buying seats in Illinois is like shooting Polish sausage in a barrel.
In 1998, Pritzker ran for the primary in Illinois’ 9th Congressional District, vacated by longtime incumbent Sidney Yates. According to the Chicago Tribune, Pritzker spent “nearly a million dollars of his own money” trying to win the primary, a totally unheard of amount in that day and age.
He finished third out of three major candidates, garnering 21 percent of the vote to 45 percent for state Rep. Janice Schakowsky and 35 percent for state Sen. Howard Carroll.
Ten years later, in 2008, Pritzker had some discussions recorded for the record with an Illinois bigwig who seemed interested in giving him a shot.
You may have heard of him: Democratic former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, the man who got sent to prison for trying to sell the Senate seat Barack Obama left vacant when he got elected to the White House.
Pritzker didn’t want to be in the Senate, he told Blagojevich in calls wiretapped by the FBI, but he would be interested in Illinois state treasurer.
“Ooh, interesting,” Blagojevich said. “Let’s think about that. You interested in that?”
“Yeah,” Pritzker answered, “that’s the one I would want.” In a separate phone call, Pritzker told Blagojevich that, “My interest in holding public office is, you know, always large.” Insert your own McDonald’s joke here.
However, public officials have never implicated Pritzker in any specific wrongdoing and the Chicago Sun-Times noted in 2017 that, in the wiretapped calls, “he raised several objections to Blagojevich’s request for campaign contributions in the context of the vacancies, albeit rather gently.”
Very gently, it must be noted: “Yeah, I don’t think we should even talk about it, but I understand what you’re saying,” Pritzker told Blagojevich about pay-to-play stuff.
Then, in 2018, Pritzker finally got his wish: He won the gubernatorial race, putting his name and his money ($42 million of it, according to NPR Illinois, which made it the most expensive gubernatorial race in U.S. history at the time) to good use.
And what has he done? He hasn’t fixed any of his state’s problems; Chicago is a worse mess than usual and none of the state’s other major problems have been fixed despite running a deficit.
Pritzker actually had a chance to end the closest thing to king-coronation we’ve seen in American presidential politics when he refused to challenge an obviously senile Joe Biden in a rigged 2024 primary which ended up with a nominee not named Biden who was selected without a single popular primary vote.
And of course he did it because he knew that, with his wealth and name, he had a better chance in 2028 if everything blew up, like it did.
But sure: No Kings, guv. Because if your name was J.B. Smith, you’d be where you were today and looking at a run at the White House in two years, right?
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