The Trump Administration Is Terrified of No Kings Protests

Estimates of the first No Kings protest this year had turnout over five million nationwide (the data scientist G. Elliot Morris estimated this was the second-largest protest in American history, as over one percent of the total population protested that day), so let’s just do some math on what the Republicans are alleging. How much do you think you would need to get paid to show up and hang out at a protest all day? Let’s start with $100, that seems like a reasonable amount to pay a fake protester to fake protest for several hours. That’s $500 million total. As a certified finance person, I can promise you that if that much money had been disbursed, there would be records of it somewhere.

To put that figure in context, George Soros could only afford fourteen paid No Kings protests at that rate on his entire net worth of $7.2 billion (net worths are not liquid either so this is not a straight expression of the cash he has on hand). This allegation Republicans are making is yet another example of how they do not understand finance or economics whatsoever. Unless you’re using the GOP’s favored fraudulent method of crypto or their mad King’s longtime love of opaque real estate deals to pay five million people individually, it’s not easy to hide this amount of money. Not to mention, if all protesters were paid, you think all five million-plus would keep their mouths shut about it? You don’t think at least one doofus would be on Tik Tok flashing their check from George Soros?

Let’s take this logic a bit further into something that makes even less sense to try to give the GOP the benefit of the doubt on their baseless allegations. While it’s hard to think of the kind of person who does not care about what Trump is doing but still would be willing to protest it for very little money, let’s assume there are five million people like that who are willing to be paid $20 for a day’s worth of protesting. That’s $100 million! Again, there’s just no mathematical value that aligns with the GOP’s talking points, because these protests are so huge. They can only be organic, and because they reflect the broader tale that all polls are telling right now, they serve as a source of existential dread for Republicans. It’s easy to call them the fake news polls, but it’s a lot harder to tell people in cities and towns across the country that the people they see out protesting this Saturday aren’t real.

It is your right, and duty I would argue, to protest as an American. I’m sure some Republicans may call us a bunch of partisan liberal snowflakes, but if you scroll back to our writing from last year, we were protesting the Democratic administration pretty vociferously too. Protest is about outcomes, not partisanship, it just so happens that one group of partisans are creating outcomes leading to the degradation of our economy as they kidnap people off the streets and disappear them in violation of our Constitution. People don’t like that, and these constitutional questions extend past basic partisanship.

No Kings is about the Constitution, which I would bet is a further source of Republican anxiety as they cannot utilize one of their favored talking points here. They know full well they’re shredding the Constitution. Congress is aware that their Article I powers have been functionally eliminated and Trump and his toadies on the Supreme Court dictate what gets government funding now, and the No Kings protests are designed to highlight grave constitutional violations like this. The reason the Republicans are on the back foot and trying to claim that millions of Americans are paid protesters is because No Kings is fundamentally a constitutional argument, something the GOP has typically tried to make with their bullshit originalist talking points.

Now the GOP knows that they are not the Constitution loving party. They have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt this year that they will overturn constitutional precedent they themselves have established in a heartbeat if it means letting Trump do his King routine. History will remember them as the party who overturned the Constitution and established an American autocrat, and they’re freaking out about being called out over it. If the polls weren’t combining to create a very bleak picture for a party who is destroying the engine of all political popular support in any country—the economy—I bet they would not be as worried about the No Kings protests. But because these protests reveal what America actually is, not what their propaganda operation claims it to be, they have to lie about it and call wine moms and people in unicorn suits terrorists. This is a weak regime that gets weaker every day, and Saturday will create many more moments proving how unpopular America’s new King really is. You can find your local No Kings protest here, as there are countless spread across the entire country, and if you don’t have one in your town, you can plan one yourself on the No Kings website.