‘Coup d’Flat’: Biggest Takeaways from the ‘No Kings’ Protests
Asked if there were any particular reason why he doesn’t like Trump, the protester replied, “No clue at all. I’m just going with [what] everybody else is saying.”
The Democrats’ much-ballyhooed “No Kings” protests on Saturday turned out to be more fizzle than fireworks. As details of the day roll in, they paint an unflattering portrait of a political party in disarray, struggling to force a phony message upon an electorate that’s grown increasingly skeptical of them.
Perhaps the most incisive take came from Mike Benz, executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online. Replying to a post that called the Manhattan rally “more of a scheduled appearance than a real grassroots movement” — one that went “from packed to sparse in record time” — Benz said Washington, D.C., had fared no better, dubbing the event a “coup d’flat.”
Benz was spot on.
Fell flat in DC too. Coup d’f́lat. https://t.co/1lb7JVesDG
— Mike Benz (@MikeBenzCyber) October 18, 2025
Attendees did not appear to know why, precisely, they were there
The real story came through in the words of the attendees. In the clip below, a young participant tells a reporter that “Trump’s a b*tch.” Asked to elaborate, he said, “I don’t know. We don’t like him. That’s the word around here.”
Asked if there were any particular reason why he doesn’t like Trump, the protester replied, “No clue at all. I’m just going with [what] everybody else is saying.”
In honor of No Kings today, here is my favorite interview of all time. 10 seconds of pure glory. pic.twitter.com/jypj2HfWsI
— Jeff Hunt (@jeffhunt) October 18, 2025
He was hardly the only attendee who had no clue what he was protesting. Christian Conservative influencer Caroline Joyous interviewed several participants at a rally in Alabama. None of them provided her with a serious response when she asked “What are some ways that President Trump has put your freedom in danger?”
One man, dressed as Jesus, complete with a crown of thorns, said, “I wouldn’t say my freedom’s in jeopardy.”
When Caroline asked, “So why are you here at the No Kings protest?” he had nothing to say.
A second protester, dressed in a shark costume, had no response.
A third participant merely said, “Um.”
A fourth began, “I think, um, that he has done so by … ” [End of response.]
Clearly annoyed by the question, another replied, “Like, you’re not cute, this isn’t funny.”
@carolinejoyous Crashing a “No Kings” protest as a Christian…😅 #christian #conservative #republican #liberal #nokings
The majority of protesters appeared to be senior citizens
Aside from a small contingent of very young participants — as is often the case at left-wing protests, the crowds appeared to consist largely of baby boomers.
They emptied the retirement homes for an extra pudding night. They work cheaply.🤭 pic.twitter.com/CdLxOtmfif
— TLC (@camp_terrence) October 19, 2025
ZeroHedge’s Tyler Durden emphasized this point:
Any momentum gained by No Kings, Indivisible, and their activist networks, along with billionaire sponsors, could quickly evaporate in the colder months when boomers generally stay indoors or head south. We have a strategy idea for Indivisible kids running the show: try riling up the boomers in The Villages, Florida.
Protester reveals to Newsmax reporter that they’d been trained
Questioned by Newsmax correspondent Alana Austin at the Washington, D.C., rally, a pink-haired protestor, a self-described “anti-fascist,” admitted they’d received instructions from event organizers on how to behave. This is a tell-tale sign these protests were not a grass-roots effort.
With her back to the camera, she told Austin:
We’ve all been told to be peaceful. We’ve had training on how to be peaceful and to deescalate.
None of us want anything that’s not peaceful.
As PJ Media’s Matt Margolis put it:
I’ve been to real protests—small groups holding signs, big crowds that showed up because they cared, with no one handing out instruction manuals or cutting checks. That was activism. What we’re seeing now from the radical left is something else entirely: astroturfing on an industrial scale.
In 2009, I participated in the Taxpayer March on Washington, a large Tea Party protest against President Barack Obama’s policies. We had no training. We weren’t equipped with mass-produced signs. We made our own and we each knew precisely why we’d come. My sign read, “One Big A** Mistake America.”
The ‘No Kings’ events were backed by the Communist Party and the Marxist Movement
The list of sponsors for the “No Kings” protests includes the Communist Party USA, the Democratic Socialists of America, and the Freedom Socialist Party. As Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY) points out in the post below, they don’t even try to hide it.
In case you were wondering who is behind the No Kings March…it’s the Communist Party and the Marxist Movement. They don’t even hide it… pic.twitter.com/g112pnnS6K
— Rep. Nicole Malliotakis Office (@RepNicole) October 18, 2025
The protests were funded by all the usual suspects
Days before the protests, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) told Fox News’ Sean Hannity, “There’s considerable evidence that George Soros and his network are behind funding these rallies, which may well be riots all across the country.”
Working alongside Peter Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute, investigative reporter Seamus Bruner has helped expose the money trails behind such controversial entities as the Biden family’s influence peddling business and the Clinton Foundation.
Last week, Bruner reported that the No Kings initiative received major funding from powerful left-wing dark money groups including: Arabella Advisors, George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, as well as the Ford, Tides, Buffett, and Rockefeller Foundations.
Moreover, the leadership of these groups all seem to be connected. Fox News reports, for example, that Leah Greenberg, who serves as the executive co-director of Indivisible, the group that “managed data and communications” for the No Kings protests, formerly “served as the policy director for the Tom Perriello for Governor of Virginia campaign. Perriello was the executive director for the Open Society Foundations from October 2018 to July 2023, furthering the ties between Soros and the Indivisible organization.
Indivisible has been “awarded grants every year since the organization’s conception in 2017” from Soros’s foundations, as per Fox.
If the name Indivisible sounds familiar, it is because the group has organized many protests over the past few years, including the national Tesla protests, according to Fox News’ Laura Ingraham.
The dark money flowing out of these groups is eating away at America’s institutions. The Department of Justice has begun tracing the web of donors, shell organizations, and offshore accounts behind it.
📊We traced $294,487,641 to the official No Kings 2.0 partners & organizers…all funneled through the same “Riot Inc.” dark-money networks:
💰 Arabella network $79.7M+
💰 Soros network $72.1M+
💰 Ford network $51.7M+
💰Tides $45.5M+
💰 Rockefeller $28.6M+
💰 Buffett $16.6M+ pic.twitter.com/b6zFla79UP— Seamus Bruner (@seamusbruner) October 16, 2025
For all of the tens of millions of dollars spent on the No Kings protests, there’s little evidence that they moved the political needle. As we saw, not even attendees are buying the spin that Trump is the second coming of Hitler.
That might be because Democrats more closely resemble Nazi Party propaganda master Joseph Goebbels than Trump does “der Führer,” and that voters are finally catching on.
Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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Comments
You misspelled No Brains protest 😄
As long as the protests are peaceful, I couldn’t care less how much money Soros & Co. burn. It is when the protest become violent that I care who is funding the violence.
Money spent on useless protests is money not available to Dem candidates’ election campaigns. That has my stamp of approval.
A true “investigating reporter” would ask: “Are you receiving any kind of payment to be here?” Inquiring minds…
They tried to be violent, but it’s hard to throw a really good punch when you’re tied to a walker or a wheelchair. All they are is a bunch of really old hippies still protesting Nixon – and half of them likely think he’s still President.
A cool quarter billion..gone. They really know how to spend money for nothing … and the chicks aren’t free.
Quarter of billion? That’s chicken feed compared to what Harris spent on her failed 2024 presidential election campaign. Seems as if they aren’t trying that hard any longer.
Aren’t free? For heaven’s sake, man — they’re 83!
I was just thinking about the source of funding, not paid protesting but rather through promoted content on social media. If you read the comments on the media webpages re: No Kings you will see how badly John Q Public is reacting to the nonsense. Anti-protest commentary is 5-1 over pro-protest commentary, and the No Kings crowd repeatedly resorts to base threats and name-calling while the anti-protest crowd is gleefully making jokes. The cropped crowd photos and unusual fascination with the phrase “Thousands of attendees” stands in a stark contrast with what we see.
They were obviously doing these rallies on the cheap. That is why they were so many of them in so many scattered locations. It takes only minimal payment to get someone to walk a few blocks from their house and hold up signs for a few hours, or drive to free public parking to do the same. But doing a big march through DC would take huge amounts of money. Think of the logistics – once the numbers get into the millions, all the hotel rooms for hundreds of miles will be full, the parking lots will be full too, trains will be full too, people will need to be bussed in over large distances and costs escalate exponentially.
Funding source? From the look of things SSA and probably over generous public employee pensions with an assist from billionaires and trust fund management who hate the USA.
Bari Weiss asked the staff at 60 Minutes: “Why does the country think you’re biased?: She got no answer either.
If she gets back up there are going to be hard times coming to that network.
I’m beginning to be sympathetic to towards the position the South Park character Cartman holds towards ‘hippies’; summon Cthulhu and let him run wild destroying them wherever they are found.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iRV30cfT8w
That has my vote! F’tagn!
Cthulhu 2026
Why choose between the lesser of two evils?
Probably because the stars won’t be anywhere near right until 2028
But don’t worry, It’s waiting.
Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.
Cthulhu 2028.
As I’ve said elsewhere — a herd of sheep has more free-thinkers and less crap than a leftist rally.
Two words —
• Silly
• Feckless
I listen to a string of interviews from these knuckle draggers. Most had no clue why they were there (I suspect soros cash) but a few just couldn’t get past the TDS to even make an argument.
The resistance is dead Jim.
George “Nazi” Soros is a very old man. More than anyone else walking the earth today, I am certain that another ring of hell needs to be created just to house him in the ever after.
Until then, I suggest he be confined to a maximum security prison cell and the entirety of his ill-gotten assets confiscated.
Even with George gone, we’ll have to deal with the next-gen power couple Alex Soros and Huma “Hillary” Abedin.
1. He is not a Nazi, never was one, and no matter what else he has done in his life it is pure and unforgivable evil to falsely accuse a survivor of being a Nazi.
2. He hasn’t committed any crimes that anyone knows about.
3. His assets were not ill-gotten. He created that wealth, it wouldn’t exist without him, and it belongs to him. Confiscating it would make you a thief, and therefore worse than him.
If you don’t believe in the sanctity of private property then why do you oppose him? What’s your objection to communism, if you are yourself a communist?
Collaboration is close enough.
“…that anyone knows about.” Operative phrase.
#2: Insider trading, French case?
https://www.expatica.com/fr/general/top-europe-court-upholds-soros-insider-trading-conviction-91395/
Well, whatdayaknow! Someone’s got Milhouse stirred up again! Not that it’s hard to do, since no one does devil’s advocate with more consistency or indignation. Soros has earned his notoriety the old fashioned way, by nefariously using his ill gotten wealth to sponsor a plethora of subterfuges that attract weak minded malcontents like flies to excrement. He has dishonored his heritage by defiling and attempting to dispose of the civilizations that enabled him, just as blatantly as the sonderkommandos, but of his own free will.
Oh, and he earned much of his initial wealth via financial tradings in which he shorted the currencies of economies made vulnerable by the incompetence of politicians he supported. Some might call that shady or ill gotten, and apparently a lot of people are still mad at him about that. Does raise the interesting possibility that he is now attempting to destabilize our society and ultimately our currency by fomenting rebellion and installing more incompetents. Which he has every right to do, according to our own Apologist-in-Chief!
He IS a nazi, He has nazi goals.
He got his wealth through destabilizing nations and their currencies.
The only reason he’s not a criminal is because he’s created crimes that have never existed before and thus are not yet illegal –and part of his scheming is to keep them that way.
And, Democrat, survivors survived the camps. His nazi buddies never put him in one. Just being a Jew during the time of the third reich doesn’t make you a ‘holocaust survivor’.
Trump is an incompetent fascist. He ends wars and is shrinking the federal government.
“In the clip below, a young participant tells a reporter that “Trump’s a b*tch.” Asked to elaborate, he said, “I don’t know. We don’t like him. That’s the word around here.”
30 years ago, we used to complain that at every annual state gun laws hearing, the press would immediately swarm the stupidest looking camo-clad Jethro they could find in the auditorium to “interview the typical Massachusetts gun owner” for the evening news. It’s great to see our guys learning how to play by Democrat rules.
Our 23 yr,new college grad (engineer), says young people can’t stand these old 1960’s protesters. He says young people believe these are the people that screwed up the country and young people want nothing to do with them.
The wild chicks who dressed in black leather, chain-smoked joints, and doled out free love are now wearing housecoats and Depends, popping Xanax, and spaying their cats.
The only rally I personally saw (along the side of the FFX County Pkwy) was absolutely pathetic. About 20 geezers, some in wheelchairs, holding signs. Later in Middleburg, I saw some old women carrying signs to somewhere, some of the signs were professionally printed, the others were homemade. And my favorite cookie shop was closing early because it was shortstaffed, presumably because the girls working there left early to go to a rally. Soros must pay more than 3 hours pay at the bake shop, but I still managed to get my cookies.
For a rally it is pathetic that there is not a new rallying cry. “No Kings” was done just a few months ago. Where is new content? No dialog. No persuasion. Just insults. Not even new insults.
Like “Drumpf” — a 100-year-old insult that isn’t even vaguely insulting.
(But don’t YOU dare deadname the little p*ks.)
For decades, close on a century really, Democrats built up the federal bureaucracy as the de facto ruling Dictatorship in the US. They’ve done essentially the same at the State level. No matter who wins any election, the bureaucracy doesn’t change – either in personnel or policy.
As much as possible, they shielded these bureaucracies from voters as well as from all three of the supposed actual branches of government.
Congress ceded most of its legislative power to these bureaucracies. Many of which have, by law, by delegated the task of writing “regulations” that have the force of law. Enormous fines and even jail time for violating them. If you try to take them to court, you find yourself in an administrative court with a non-article 3 “judge” that actually works for that same bureaucracy, and your case is heard in the same building that houses the bureaucracy.
I’ve pointed out many, many, times that the actual form of government in the US is a Dictatorship of the Bureaucracy.
This is what Trump is trying to dismantle. This is what the D Party leadership is really freaked out about.
Its not just that he’s won an election, he’s dismantling their permanent control of the actual government that we live under.
This is what makes these “no kings” protests so absurd. He’s the doing precisely the opposite of what a wannabe ‘dictator’ would be doing. He is systematically dismantling the power and scope of the federal government, and the executive branch in particular, by abolishing entire federal agencies and restoring power to the States and to us individually.
He’s also restoring the proper role of each branch of government. Congress can’t protect the political appointees of executive branch agencies – POTUS can fire them at any time. The agencies shouldn’t be legislating, that’s Congress’ job. The agencies shouldn’t be functioning as courts, that’s the judiciary’s job.
A century of D efforts to fundamentally alter our system of government is being flushed into the sewer where it belongs.
She is cute and it is funny
So, who’s mind did they change?
That wasn’t the purpose.
I’ve been saying for 40 years that the purpose of Internet debate is never to change the mind of the opponent,
Why would a grassroots movement even need funding? 😏
As I drove past the usual Ithaca aging hippies headed to their protest, I was headed to a memorial at Stewart Park, for a heroic young local man who gave his life protecting women & children against an attacker in San Francisco. It occurred to me these same leftists protesters were likely ALL In on the weak on crime policies that put the attacker on the street. Cashless bail, no mandatory minimum, ‘restorative justice’, lowering of charges, early release and failure to charge & prosecute.