What I Saw at the No Kings Rally in New York City

I had no strong interest in attending the “No Kings” march in New York City on Saturday until I learned from White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt that “The Democrat Party’s main constituency is made up of Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens, and violent criminals” and from Speaker Mike Johnson (R–La.) that “If you think about what’s going to happen…you’re going to bring together the Marxists, the socialists, the Antifa advocates, the anarchists, and the pro-Hamas wing of the far-left Democrat Party.”

Once I heard this, I was in. Who wouldn’t want to see such an unprecedented and vile political rally, right in one’s own neighborhood? Sure, William Kristol, the former Republican strategist who was Dan Quayle’s “brain” and founded the defunct neoconservative flagship publication The Weekly Standard, has been insisting the No Kings movement represents patriotic dissent, but he’s got incurable Trump Derangement Syndrome, right?

The march, designated an “anchor event” by the No Kings group itself, was set to gather at 11 a.m. on Saturday at Father Duffy Square, smack dab in the middle of Times Square and just a few blocks from my apartment. From the statue honoring a bellicose Catholic World War I chaplain, demonstrators would march downtown to 14th Street and then…well, nobody I asked seemed to know what would happen next (even the police I asked shrugged). 

I had covered a few Black Lives Matter marches back in 2020 and was eager to see who showed up, what sort of signage dominated, and what the vibe of the whole thing was—especially given the darkly dire warnings of Leavitt, Johnson, and others. They are not alone, of course, in suggesting that violence is likely whenever Democrats or opponents of the president gather. Stephen Miller, one of President Donald Trump’s top advisers, is fond of saying that the Democratic Party is “a domestic extremist organization” and needs to be prosecuted as such. Sen. Ted Cruz (R–Texas) has also been prophesying violence for this weekend. He’s been flapping his gums over the past few days about how billionaire George Soros, who is to MAGA folks what Moby Dick was to Captain Ahab and Charles Koch is to progressives, has been bankrolling “political violence in our cities” and is the sugar daddy of the No Kings movement too (Trump has a hard-on against Soros too, writing in August on Truth Social, “George Soros, and his wonderful Radical Left son, should be charged with RICO because of their support of Violent Protests.”)

The TL;DR version of what I experienced at today’s No Kings march: There is a palpable anger and disgust at Donald Trump in the heart of his hometown. This isn’t news, of course—Trump lost the Big Apple by 38 percentage points. But combined with generally weak approval ratings and declining approval of his handling of key issues like the economy, the very fact that nationwide protests are happening is something he and his supporters will not be able to wave away as astroturfed opposition coming from Soros and “the pro-Hamas wing” of the Democratic Party.

As I made my way over the protest, I first encountered a 40-something man toting two of his kids in a wagon and walking with his teenage daughter. “Are you going to the protest?” I asked. “No,” he scoffed. He explained that he’s not a Trump fan by any means, especially because of tariffs, but that these sorts of protests don’t accomplish anything. Next, I helped a man zip up his inflatable frog costume (a tribute to Pepe, the old-right-wing meme), who called himself a liberal (as distinct from a progressive) and was mostly concerned with the way Congress had been abdicating its responsibilities for decades. That was the real problem, even more than Trump.

The area around Father Duffy Square was as packed as I’ve seen it, a testament to a strong turnout, and I heard loud but muffled sounds coming out of a PA system. I elbowed my way through the crowd only to find that the source of commotion had nothing to do with Trump or politics. It was an event for the KPop Demon Hunters, a popular Netflix movie built around an animated girl K-pop band, and Nongshim, a noodle company.

But No Kings marchers were also out in force, gathering before starting to head down toward 14th Street, about a mile and a half away. The crowd in Duffy Square seemed a cross-section of New York, mostly white, mostly middle-aged, and mostly dressed in weekend clothes. An Episcopalian priest carried a sign saying “Jesus was woke,” and she explained to me that her Lord made people “wake up to systemic oppression” and to help the least fortunate among us. “True Patriots Fight Fascism,” “No Kings Since 1776,” “Make 1984 Fiction Again,” “We Have Friends Everywhere,” “ICE=GESTAPO,” and “Protect Immigrants, Protect Our Neighbors, NO KINGS,” were common signs and, compared to other marches and protests I’ve seen over the past decade or so, the crowd, its clothing, and its signage was decidedly normal and mainstream. Given the impending mayoral election and the ceasefire in the Israel-Gaza war, I expected to see much more Zohran Mamdani flair and kaffiyehs. But even they were in relatively short supply.

More surprisingly, the messaging, both through signs and in conversation, was focused on the real and imagined personal failings of Trump and key points of his domestic agenda, especially Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids. The first demonstrations I attended were in college during the 1980s, and I always expect a smorgasbord of barely related causes to be represented at any political event. As an undergrad journalist at Rutgers, I covered tons of rallies that were supposed to be about divesting university endowment funds from companies that did business in apartheid South Africa. Two or three speakers in, the focus would inevitably wander to start talking about the funding of the contras in Nicaragua, or the need for a higher minimum wage in America, or universal health care, or stopping nuclear power, or whatever. At today’s No Kings march in New York, there wasn’t speechifying, but there was a surprisingly tight focus on Trump as a tyrant who needs to be impeached, stopped, or voted out.

Yet whenever I asked someone what they hated about Trump, the answer was almost always the same: “Everything!” This was true of men and women, young and old, black and white. When pressed, they would detail a list of personal qualities and moral failings. He was gross, vulgar, a rapist, disgusting, vile, fat, stupid, mentally deficient. No one seemed particularly fazed by tariffs or spending, though some signs denounced ICE as an agency and dispatching National Guard troops to cities.

The one exception to this general lack of specificity concerned Israel. As I already noted, I was surprised by the relative absence of kaffiyehs and anti-Israel signage. Which isn’t to say there were none. There were a number of signs twinning Trump with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and accusing both of genocide. When I talked to several people wearing Palestinian flags or carrying “Jews for Palestinian Freedom” signs, they foregrounded American support for Israel at the top of Trump’s sins. “Didn’t he end the war, though?” I asked. “It won’t last,” they said, or it came too late. When I asked if Trump was as bad on Israel as Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and George W. Bush before him, they said yes, but Trump was the president now.

I took the opportunity to talk with various cops posted along the route. With the warnings of Ted Cruz, Mike Johnson, and Karoline Leavitt buzzing around the back of my mind, I asked them whether they were concerned about things getting violent. One cop, who said he’d been on the force since the mid-aughts, laughed and gestured toward the crowd of people walking, talking, and occasionally chanting. No, he said, this sort of protest doesn’t give rise to that. The others I talked to brought up COVID-era demonstrations for Black Lives Matter. Even when the issues were more fraught and revolved around acts of violence like the death of George Floyd, it’s exceptionally rare for daytime rallies and marches to go south.

As the march neared 14th Street, the column made a left-hand turn in the direction of Union Square but quickly started dissipating. I grabbed a bike and started heading back uptown to my apartment. I crossed through Times Square again, where the KPop Demon Hunters pop-up was still giving out Nongshim noodles. 

A beautiful fall day still lay ahead of New York.