Listening to anyone from the Trump administration talk about the No Kings protest would have had you expecting complete anarchy. Masked men with Molotov cocktails, smoke in the air, American flags burning, police and National Guard in full riot gear—something more akin to January 6.
“This crazy No Kings rally this weekend, which is gonna be the farthest left, the hardest core, the most unhinged in the Democratic Party, which is a big title,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said, claiming that the Democrats were for some reason waiting for the rally to happen before negotiating to end the government shutdown. “No Kings equal no paychecks.”
Republicans have been repeating something along those lines for over a week leading up to the rally.
“We call it the ‘Hate America’ Rally that’ll happen Saturday,” Speaker Mike Johnson said that same day. “Let’s see who shows up for that. I bet you you see pro-Hamas supporters, I bet you you’ll see antifa types, I bet you you’ll see Marxists in full display, the people who don’t want to stand and defend the foundational truths of this republic. And we do.”
Republican Senator Roger Marshall called it a “Soros, paid-for protest where his professional protesters show up,” while House Majority Whip Tom Emmer went one step further and called it an event for the “terrorist wing” of the Democratic Party.
But much to the chagrin of the GOP, the No Kings rally in Washington, D.C., was not unhinged, not very far left, and entirely peaceful. The atmosphere was extremely energetic and family friendly for both young and old. People walked slowly, often with kids in tow. Countless attendees wore large inflatable costumes, inspired by the Portland frog. There was live music, tabling, and speeches by Bill Nye, Mehdi Hasan, and Senators Bernie Sanders and Chris Murphy, among others. And while the event was massive, the vibe was closer to that of a lively farmer’s market on a nice Sunday morning than it was to whatever the right was trying so desperately to convince people it would be.
But perhaps equally upsetting for Republicans: The 200,000 people who are estimated to have shown up in D.C.—of the roughly seven million protesters nationwide—represented an expansive contingent of Americans. Many of them seemed to care quite a bit about those “foundational truths” Johnson pretended to be so worried about.
One of those people was a 49-year-old woman wearing a massive inflatable costume of a bald eagle dressed as Uncle Sam. “It’s absurd. This is everyday Americans who are looking at … every day there’s something new that is illegal or anti-constitutional,” the eagle said when I asked her about the GOP’s antifa and Hamas allegations. “The most American thing I think we can do is vote, and then the second most American thing you can do is peaceful protest.... I am proud to be an American, and I am proud to be part of this country, and I am an incredible supporter of the United States Constitution.”
Darla, 67 (but 68 in a week), a military veteran and third-generation Philadelphean, placed a similar emphasis on what so many No Kings attendees saw as a bastardization of America’s founding principles.
“[No Kings] means that we should have three powers, as per the Constitution, judicial, congressional, and executive, and they balance each other. And right now there is no balance,” she said. “One person, followed by all the little sycophants and the puppet masters, is making decisions that are not being balanced. And so the White House is playing king.”
She also made a point to lean in to the GOP’s mass antifa branding.
“It is antifa. It’s anti-fascism. We have a government that’s very quickly going into a fascist non-democracy,” Darla continued. “My mother served in World War II. She was an anti-fascist. She served against a fascist government in Germany and in Italy, you know, the triad there. So, yeah, it’s anti fascism. Give me a break.”
It took maybe about five minutes among this solidly liberal, “protest the right way” No Kings crowd to completely shatter the Republican facade. These were retirees, public school teachers, college students, and quite a few former government workers who’d been fired or took the buy out in the DOGE culling.
Chantel, an African American woman in her forties, worked for the Air Force as a civilian for 20 years before taking a buyout after receiving DOGE’s infamous “fork in the road” email. She attended the event with her mother, Janet Winn, and was holding a sign that read “Fight the Radical Right.”
“I wasn’t able to protest until I was officially not a government worker. So as of October 1, I can go to protest. So this is my first one. I’m happy to be here,” she told me. “The DEI was also part of my reasoning with making the decision to go ahead and get out of the government, because them trying to eliminate and dismantle all those things we worked for, as far as having equity and with promotions and hiring, it was really disappointing. And taking away all the Black history and the Black celebrations that we would have.... It was just disappointing after 20 years of being with them because the military was always, I felt, like the most non-biased organization. We’ve hit reverse on all the progress we made.”
Lee, a Fairfax, Virginia, resident, was fired from his job as a federal contractor for the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. “It was wiped off the map, no conversation, nothing,” he said. He was there with his wife Laura, a public school teacher. They rejected the notion of being antifa, or being on George Soros’s payroll.
“No, and I could assure you, I could use the money. I wish someone was paying me to be here!” Lee said. “I am here of my own volition, I 100 percent believe in this. I refuse to back down to this insanity that is upon us.”
Chuck Epps, 76, a retired local journalist and schoolteacher from Richmond, made a similar point to distance himself from such claims, recalling his experiences as an anti-war protester in the 1960s.
“I’m not a proponent of violence. Never have been. I’m old enough to have marched in anti-Vietnam protests and gotten tear gassed and so forth. And when that kind of street violence occurs, I bolt. I’m not for violence of any kind,” he said. “99.999 percent of everybody here is here because they feel strongly about this, or they’re just voyeurs and want to check it out.”
“I think there’s clearly a far-left fringe that does do violent things, as I would argue that there’s a more predominant right-wing fringe that does a lot more violence and advocates for it. But that’s not what antifascism is about. They’re trying to demonize everybody who’s opposed to this administration’s objectives. It’s gaslighting.”
There were some members of that supposed left fringe in attendance. A smaller pro-Palestinian contingent from Youth Demand D.C. and some D.C. Metro Democratic Socialists of America members were gathered by a die-in protest aimed to raise awareness of Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.
I spoke to Sam Nelson, 33, who has been a member of the D.C. Metro DSA for ten years, about his group’s place in this movement—especially given that the Trump administration seems to have targeted them more than many of the other groups in attendance.
“Simply being in a march is not enough, and that’s why I think it’s very important that we as DSA show up as an organization, so we can tell people that this is not just about Trump. This has been building for years, if not decades,” Nelson told me. He also emphasized that even though the DSA members there received some “weird looks” or were approached with “caution,” they see it as a chance to work together rather than a moment for purity testing.
“The ruling class is very collective. They love working together. The ruling class is also very internationalist. They love working with right-wing oligarchs in other countries around the world. They work together. And we’ve got to work together all the same.... You’ve got to go where the people are,” he continued. “Look how many people are out here, particularly federal workers. Go where the people are mobilizing. And that might look different depending on where you live, and that’s okay.... There are many, many roads that lead to Rome. And many paths into the socialist movement.”
It’s obvious that Republican proselytizing and fearmongering about violence and agitators at this rally was strategic, but it’s even more obvious that it was a piss poor strategy. You can’t plug your ears and yell “antifa” while hundreds of thousands of Americans march through the streets. It’s laughable that an event co-signed by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former Vice President Kamala Harris would even serve as a sleeper cell for antifa, and yet Republicans told that lie over, and over, and over again, even as their policies—and their president—become increasingly less popular.
“It’s the ultimate gaslighting of America that this administration is trying to pull. Antifa are the people he doesn’t like,” Epps told me. “It’s gaslighting, and it’s coming from the absolute highest levels of U.S. government.”
