⁍ Thailand’s King Maha Vajiralongkorn praised a man who held up a royal portrait at an anti-establishment rally.

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⁍ The king has made no public comment on the protests seeking the resignation of the prime minister and also increasingly targeting royal powers.

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⁍ ‘Very brave, very brave, very good, thank you,’ the king said in a video circulated widely on social media.

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– Thailand’s King Maha Vajiralongkorn has made his first public comment on the country’s political crisis—and it’s a doozy. While meeting with protesters at the Grand Palace on Friday, the king praised a man who held up a royal portrait, reports Reuters. “Very brave, very brave, very good, thank you,” he said to the man, identified by the AP as restaurant manager Thitiwat Tanagaroon. “I will put the shirt I wore in a frame.” The king has made no public comment on the protests seeking the resignation of Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, a former junta leader they accuse of engineering an election last year to keep power. He denies the accusation. The protests also seek changes to the constitution and to reduce the powers of the monarchy, which they say has helped enable decades of military domination. Under Thailand’s constitution, the monarchy is ‘enthroned in a position of revered worship’ but in principle it does not engage in politics—a point the king underlined during elections last year. James Buchanan, a lecturer at Bangkok’s Mahidol University International College, says the king’s comments marked his clearest intervention so far in Thailand’s crisis. “I interpret it as signaling that the king acknowledges the challenge to his authority by the protests, but will not back down,” he says.