After record-setting rallies across the country, Trump and Joni Ernst dismiss No Kings Day protesters as paid and ‘whacked out’

On Saturday, millions of Americans around the country, including more than 12,000 people across Iowa, took part in the No Kings Day of Peaceful Protest. Thousands filled the Pentacrest in Iowa City, and a crowd of similar size gathered at the Iowa State Capitol in Des Moines. In Cedar Rapids, thousands lined 8th Avenue SE for a No Kings event. WQAD reported at least 4,000 people in Davenport participating, and the Courier reported 3,000 in Waterloo. In Ames, an estimated 1,500 people rallied in O’Neil Park, according to the Iowa State Daily. 

Even in smaller cities within areas President Trump easily carried in the 2024 election, people came out to protest his administration’s policies and behavior. Iowa Public Radio reported hundreds of protesters in Clinton and dozens in Maquoketa. Around 230 people in Storm Lake turned out for No Kings, according to the Storm Lake Times Pilot. 

National organizers estimated that 7 million people participated in 2,700 events nationwide on Saturday. Data journalism site Strength in Numbers partnered with the science news organization The Xylom to analyze the size of the protests. G. Elloit Morris of Strength in Numbers reported that their estimate, based on reports from participants, of total attendance was lower than 7 million. Relying on conservative estimates, Morris said it’s likely between 5 million and 6.5 million rallied at No Kings events. 

“Still, regardless of whether the precise number is 5, 6, 7, or 8 million, Saturday’s events are very likely the biggest single-day protest event since 1970, surpassing even the 2017 Women’s March demonstrations against Trump,” Morris reported. 

Predictably, President Trump dismissed and derided the massive protests. The AI-generated videos Trump posted on social media before and after the protests — the first showing Trump donning a crown and royal cape, and wielding a sword as Democratic leaders kneel before him; the second showing a crown-wearing Trump as a fighter pilot dumping sewage on protesters, and even an American flag at a protest in New York City — have been widely shared because such a bizarre, puerile reaction to peaceful demonstration by a president is unprecedented in the country’s history.

Trump’s response to an AP reporter asking for his opinion on the protests has gotten much less attention. 

“I think it’s a joke,” Trump said. “I looked at the people. They’re not representative of this country. And I looked at all the brand-new signs paid for, I guess it was paid for by Soros and other radical-left lunatics. It looks like it was. We’re checking it out.”

Throughout his political career, Trump has baselessly claimed that people protesting against him are phonies — or “professionals” — being paid to protest. In his conspiracy theories, Trump routinely asserts George Soros is funding the phony protests. 

Soros, a Hungarian-American investor and philanthropist, has long been a major funder of liberal causes, as well as efforts to promote justice, democracy and international understanding that are frequently labeled as “liberal” by opponents of those efforts. For almost as long, Soros has been the target of extreme derision and scapegoating on the conservative end of the political spectrum; the further right you go on that spectrum, the louder the antisemitic undertones in statements about Soros become, until they are just updated versions of old conspiracy theories about “international Jewish bankers” secretly manipulating American politics. 

“The demonstrations were very small, very ineffective and the people were whacked out,” Trump told the reporters, none of whom challenged his description. “When you look at those people, those are not representative of the people of our country.”

“And by the way, I’m not a king,” the president said, finishing his response. “I’m not a king. I work my ass off to make our country great, that’s all it is.”

This is an official statement from the White House.

— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona.bsky.social) 2025-10-19T16:04:12.899Z

Trump was speaking to reporters on Air Force One as he was flying back to Washington D.C. The president flew to Florida on Friday to spend the weekend golfing. 

Speaking to Fox News on Monday, Sen. Joni Ernst echoed President Trump’s view of the No Kings protests, even his claim the protesters were secretly paid, possibly by Soros. 

“I think it’s extremely important we look at who is funding these protests,” Ernst said. “We have to get to the bottom of this. It is a much larger organization. It could be the usual suspect, of course — George Soros. But what we have seen in the past, of course, is threat [sic] to local governments and property, and so we do need to make sure that these are safe protests.”

“And I would say that we are thankful that there are no kings here in the great United States of America,” the senator continued. “What we do have are democratically elected leaders, such as President Donald Trump, who won in a landslide last November. And this is why these people are gathering — they simply don’t want the will of the people.”

Ernst:I think it is extremely important we look at who is funding these protests. We have to get to the bottom of this. It is a much larger organization. It could be the usual suspect, George Soros. pic.twitter.com/ik8hBgVF0W

— Acyn (@Acyn) October 20, 2025

Trump, of course, did not win in a landslide last November. He received less than 50 percent of the popular vote, winning 49.81 percent. Unlike in 2016, when he won the Electoral College but lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton, Trump did beat Kamala Harris in the popular vote, but just by 1.5 percent. His larger Electoral College victory in 2024 was only the 20th largest of any Republican president, according to the University of California Santa Barbara’s comprehensive American Presidency Project. 

Despite Trump and Ernst’s characterization of the No Kings event, the atmosphere on the crowded Pentacrest was both defiant and joyful. Even though there were large turnouts for the two April protests in Iowa City, and for the first No Kings Day in June, the gathering of Saturday dwarfed those rallies. Speakers — and the signs in the crowd — addressed a wide variety of Trump’s actions and policies, but the shadow of ICE loomed larger on Saturday than it had in April or June. 

Several speakers referenced the violent seizure of a Colombian immigrant working at the Bread Garden Market, just blocks away, by ICE agents on Sept. 25. Wearing plainclothes and not displaying IDs or badges, the agents tackled a terrified Jorge González, pinning him to the floor as bystanders watched. One agent kneeled on González’s head as they struggled to handcuff him. 

González came to Iowa City in November 2024 and lives at the Catholic Worker House with his partner and their baby son. He had been cooperating with ICE, attending regular check-ins and wearing an ICE-mandated ankle monitor as he worked under an application for asylum, when agents seized him. 

Members of Escucha Mi Voz (EMV), a nonprofit that assists and advocates for immigrants, spoke at the rally on the Pentacrest on Saturday. González’s mother-in-law, Eva Castro, gave attendees an update on him, as EMV lead organizer Alejandra Escobar translated. 

“He’s in Muscatine, in jail,” Castro said, as her daughter Laura stood by her side, holding her and Jorge’s baby, who was born in Iowa. “They accused him of fraud, however the federal prosecutor said there is no evidence, but ICE is still keeping him there in jail. We’re fighting for his asylum, and we’re fighting for his freedom.”

“We are hardworking people who came to this country hoping to find protection, safety, peace and a better life,” Castro continued. “Today, our reality is different. Like many other families and immigrant workers we suffer persecution and violation of our rights by the ICE system and by this government that labels us as criminals just for being immigrants.”

Castro thanked the members of the crowd for the support they’ve shown for her family. 

“I want to let you know, we are holding the line,” EMV’s Escobar said, after Castro finished. “We’re fighting for democracy in these authoritarian conditions. We’re fighting so we can build the country in freedom and dignity.”

Escobar described the attempts of the ICE office in Cedar Rapids to avoid accountability. Earlier this year, the Cedar Rapids office suddenly banned members of EMV, the Catholic Worker or other volunteers from accompanying  immigrants to support them as they check in with ICE. The agency is now in the process of building a seven-foot fence in front of its Cedar Rapids office to exclude immigrant advocates and protesters. 

Halfway through the rally, protesters marched along the sidewalks of downtown Iowa City. The crowd was so large that it took almost an hour for all the protesters that marched to complete the course. The banner-carriers at the front of the march arrived back at the Pentacrest before about the half the crowd had a chance to start out. 

Speeches continued after the march. 

“This year has been one thing after another, and some days it is hard to get up and get moving,” Johnson County Supervisor Mandi Remington told the crowd. “But I do, because I know that the thing I’m tired of is watching corrupt politicians and billionaires destroy our communities.”

“The headlines read like a mash-up of dystopian fiction and history that we swore we would never repeat. But this isn’t fiction and it’s not some far-off time. Fascism is here now. It looks like plainclothes ICE agents abducting our neighbor in the middle of the day. It looks like trans Iowans stripped of their civil rights.”

Remington also cited the ongoing attempts to limit reproductive freedom, and the Trump administration deploying armed National Guard troops, and even Marines, in cities run by Democrats, as other examples of what growing fascism looks like. 

“It looks like our friends, our neighbors and our coworkers getting fired for speaking the truth,” she continued. “It looks like judges being arrested, mayors being threatened, dissent being punished, journalists being silenced and educators being forced to lie.”

All this is happening, Remington pointed out, as economic inequality is growing rapidly in America, and the Trump administration and Republican leaders try to convince people protests are fake or possibly the work of “domestic terrorists.” 

“They want us to believe that loving our neighbors, protecting the vulnerable and standing up for human rights is dangerous,” Remington said. “And that’s because they want us to give up. They want us to feel helpless, they want us to be afraid to speak. To feel alone. But as you can see right now, we are not.”

Remington said people needed to realize “solidarity is power” especially when it is used to build “networks of support” in the community. 

“It isn’t easy work,” she said. “It’s going to be exhausting and sometimes terrifying, and that’s OK. It’s OK to be afraid when shit is terrifying. We don’t have to pretend we’re not scared, and we really shouldn’t. Because right now what we need more than ever is to be real with each other.”

“Bravery isn’t the absence of fear. It’s showing up, doing what needs to be done in spite of it. And when we show up together like this, that fear loses its power.”