Seems a lot of trial runs happening here, but one of the things you shared was the form they signed, releasing them forever for anything that happens during one of these protests. They’ve got many of these people on a list now and even if they get caught doing something next time, they signed a release that will give some cover.
That list I mentioned is pretty important though. As somebody who’s paid close attention to the gun control efforts here in America for a very long time it’s been a concern. Once you’re on a list like that, it can be used for a great many things. Declaring allegiance is not as innocent as one might think. I appreciate your content and have learned a lot from you over the last number of months. I’ve learned a lot from a great many on Substack. It’s amazing how many people actually know so much and must have an entire staff of researchers working with them! Anyways, thank you for being one of the people that I’ve learned to listen to.
Lists like that serve 2 purposes; 1 for the sponsor organization as discussed. 1 if that list is known by the officials of the administration in power.... The latter leads to no good end...
I do agree with you about the importance of lists. If nothing else Democrats have a new mailing list resource to mine for next year's mid-terms.
It will also be a resource for micro-targeting specific propaganda messages.
Will the end result of that targeting be improving the election results next year or setting the stage for anarchic violence of the sort we saw in 2020 with the George Floyd riots? I can see both purposes being served by that list.
I'm just hoping the Democrats don't think of the second option.
I’ve read that Gorge Soros spent almost three million dollars on this No Kings event. Well, he wasted his money. He made no new converts, advanced no agenda, and pretty much just provided a festival for the usual malcontents and misinformed clueless.
The Grok chart you’ve posted estimated that Minneapolis had 100,000 protesters. No possible way! More like 4,000. Here’s why: first, the leftist media wrote that the turnout was “thousands”. Believe me, if they could have in any way stretched that description to “ten thousand”, or “tens of thousands”, or “100,000” they would have! Secondly, the main event was held in DT Minneapolis in a small, one-square-block park next to the Vikings’ football stadium. That area can only hold a few thousand people, packed in tightly. Sure enough, the photos in corporate media showed the “packed” area, without mentioning how small of a park it is. Third, the leftist media - knowing full well how small the crowd was in Minneapolis - wrote extensively on the other demonstrations in very small cities, giving the overall impression that for the state there was a large turnout. Bah. One of the demonstrations they covered was a few dozen - literally, maybe two dozen - people who protested near my neighborhood lake. I’ve seen bigger crowds there selling Girl Scout cookies.
I am very relieved that no violence was reported. My sense of this event is that it will be largely forgotten within weeks. I think the vast majority of Americans are just going about their lives, pleased that gas prices are low and we’re not fighting WW3.
Are these numbers at all accurate? I remain skeptical.
What I do believe will prove to be the case is the extent to which these events were attended almost exclusively by Democrats.
That partisan tilt and partisan bias eliminates any possibility that these rallies are at all representative of the broader electorate. They are not, and no one should apprehend them that way.
Ha ha - what a bald-face lie by this “unicorn riot” source!
Look at the photo of the event. The park has diameters of one-half block X two blocks long. The photo is being taken from the corner of the park, and you can see that the length is two blocks. The crowd is not very densely packed, and it’s not humanly possible to fit 100,000 people in there.
I swear, the unhinged Left just becomes more and more divorced from reality!
Every time I try to comment, I’m required to verify my email. Every time. (Most all my subs) . I dislike the app very much so I use the browser with email notification. Is this to get us to use the app? Oh well.
My small town had a very small protest under the gaze of our town mascot—a large fiberglass Holstein cow. Mostly hand made signs referencing toilets and flushing. But whatever, they probably felt better and will go on letting President Trump live rent free in their brains. I live in a red county. I realized while we should protest as a necessary freedom, most of it is just virtue signaling and feel better-ism. Nothing much happens these days and media lies about it. I learned that during my iraq war marching days. Huge numbers of people but tiny pictures and a paragraph in the local or national media.
Not having to verify your email every time seems kind of weird it’s never happened to me. Do you have some paid subscriptions here and do you have to confirm your email with them also? I hope you get that sorted out because it interferes with your train of thought or would mine. I mean I’m ready to say a whole bunch of stuff and brakes go on, confirm the email and then my small brain forgot most of what I was going to say.
Putting on my programmer's hat for a moment, I can say with complete confidence that the Substack app well and truly sucks.
It is buggy, poorly designed, poorly laid out, and poorly coded.
As for the protests being largely free of substance and even conscious thought, from what I have seen in both corporate and alternative media, your experience is pretty much what the nation as a whole experienced.
I’ve read complaints from other Substack writers about the algorithm, and about Substack being taken over by too many leftist writers. You’re maybe already watching for a new alternative platform to emerge, and I would cheer if you switched to it. Substack’s algorithm is not doing your work justice, Peter. Your writing is very worthy of a larger following, and people just need to be able to find you. If you switch at the right moment, you might even be able to quit your day job.
Very glad there was minimal violence (there was some, but very little).
Am disappointed that the Democrats once again failed to develop a focused and cogent message of political opposition.
The great danger is not that Trump has authoritarian tendencies, but that without effective political opposition there is little check on Trump’s wielding of Presidential power. That is never a good thing and it will not end well for this country.
Democrats—and Congress as a whole—have ceded entire swaths of the Legislative Branch’s Constitutional authority to the Executive Branch. The United States Congress today is becoming as functionally useless and politically irrelevant as the Roman Senate was during the dictatorship of Julius Caesar as well as Octavian’s rise to power as Augustus, First Emperor of Rome.
Nature abhors a vacuum, and that is particularly true for politics. Congressional diffidence invariably morphs into Presidential prerogative.
The United States needs a Congress energetic enough to push back against Trump’s use of Executive power, not because Trump is an authoritarian, but because there will come a President after him who will be, and who will waste no time in turning the precedent of Trump’s Executive Orders into a pathway to imperium.
I do not want to see the United States going down that dark road.
Very wise words, Peter. What will help preserve the power balance is YOU, and other alternative writers who will continue to call out abuses of power, misinterpretations of the Constitution, etc. If the Democratic Party has become weak and useless, writers speaking Truth will help correct the course!
https://marcblumer.substack.com/p/this-collective-moment-demands-more
Yes.
Pass the popcorn, please.
Seems a lot of trial runs happening here, but one of the things you shared was the form they signed, releasing them forever for anything that happens during one of these protests. They’ve got many of these people on a list now and even if they get caught doing something next time, they signed a release that will give some cover.
Preparation for greater rebellion down the road?
That is a possibility, sad to say.
I hope you're wrong about that, but I don't think I'd wager money on the prospect.
That's not a good thing.
That list I mentioned is pretty important though. As somebody who’s paid close attention to the gun control efforts here in America for a very long time it’s been a concern. Once you’re on a list like that, it can be used for a great many things. Declaring allegiance is not as innocent as one might think. I appreciate your content and have learned a lot from you over the last number of months. I’ve learned a lot from a great many on Substack. It’s amazing how many people actually know so much and must have an entire staff of researchers working with them! Anyways, thank you for being one of the people that I’ve learned to listen to.
Lists like that serve 2 purposes; 1 for the sponsor organization as discussed. 1 if that list is known by the officials of the administration in power.... The latter leads to no good end...
All such lists should be presumed known by the government.
That is never a good thing. It is, sadly, a reality of the technological age.
Thanks! I'm glad you find my content useful.
I do agree with you about the importance of lists. If nothing else Democrats have a new mailing list resource to mine for next year's mid-terms.
It will also be a resource for micro-targeting specific propaganda messages.
Will the end result of that targeting be improving the election results next year or setting the stage for anarchic violence of the sort we saw in 2020 with the George Floyd riots? I can see both purposes being served by that list.
I'm just hoping the Democrats don't think of the second option.
I’ve read that Gorge Soros spent almost three million dollars on this No Kings event. Well, he wasted his money. He made no new converts, advanced no agenda, and pretty much just provided a festival for the usual malcontents and misinformed clueless.
The Grok chart you’ve posted estimated that Minneapolis had 100,000 protesters. No possible way! More like 4,000. Here’s why: first, the leftist media wrote that the turnout was “thousands”. Believe me, if they could have in any way stretched that description to “ten thousand”, or “tens of thousands”, or “100,000” they would have! Secondly, the main event was held in DT Minneapolis in a small, one-square-block park next to the Vikings’ football stadium. That area can only hold a few thousand people, packed in tightly. Sure enough, the photos in corporate media showed the “packed” area, without mentioning how small of a park it is. Third, the leftist media - knowing full well how small the crowd was in Minneapolis - wrote extensively on the other demonstrations in very small cities, giving the overall impression that for the state there was a large turnout. Bah. One of the demonstrations they covered was a few dozen - literally, maybe two dozen - people who protested near my neighborhood lake. I’ve seen bigger crowds there selling Girl Scout cookies.
I am very relieved that no violence was reported. My sense of this event is that it will be largely forgotten within weeks. I think the vast majority of Americans are just going about their lives, pleased that gas prices are low and we’re not fighting WW3.
Thank you for your accurate reporting, Peter!
I will reiterate that I place no great confidence in the AI estimates of rally attendance.
The Minneapolis estimate appears to come from an alternative media post that was tweeted out on X.
https://unicornriot.ninja/2025/no-kings-protest-draws-thousands-in-minneapolis/
Are these numbers at all accurate? I remain skeptical.
What I do believe will prove to be the case is the extent to which these events were attended almost exclusively by Democrats.
That partisan tilt and partisan bias eliminates any possibility that these rallies are at all representative of the broader electorate. They are not, and no one should apprehend them that way.
Ha ha - what a bald-face lie by this “unicorn riot” source!
Look at the photo of the event. The park has diameters of one-half block X two blocks long. The photo is being taken from the corner of the park, and you can see that the length is two blocks. The crowd is not very densely packed, and it’s not humanly possible to fit 100,000 people in there.
I swear, the unhinged Left just becomes more and more divorced from reality!
Every time I try to comment, I’m required to verify my email. Every time. (Most all my subs) . I dislike the app very much so I use the browser with email notification. Is this to get us to use the app? Oh well.
My small town had a very small protest under the gaze of our town mascot—a large fiberglass Holstein cow. Mostly hand made signs referencing toilets and flushing. But whatever, they probably felt better and will go on letting President Trump live rent free in their brains. I live in a red county. I realized while we should protest as a necessary freedom, most of it is just virtue signaling and feel better-ism. Nothing much happens these days and media lies about it. I learned that during my iraq war marching days. Huge numbers of people but tiny pictures and a paragraph in the local or national media.
Not having to verify your email every time seems kind of weird it’s never happened to me. Do you have some paid subscriptions here and do you have to confirm your email with them also? I hope you get that sorted out because it interferes with your train of thought or would mine. I mean I’m ready to say a whole bunch of stuff and brakes go on, confirm the email and then my small brain forgot most of what I was going to say.
Putting on my programmer's hat for a moment, I can say with complete confidence that the Substack app well and truly sucks.
It is buggy, poorly designed, poorly laid out, and poorly coded.
As for the protests being largely free of substance and even conscious thought, from what I have seen in both corporate and alternative media, your experience is pretty much what the nation as a whole experienced.
A waste of time and energy.
I’ve read complaints from other Substack writers about the algorithm, and about Substack being taken over by too many leftist writers. You’re maybe already watching for a new alternative platform to emerge, and I would cheer if you switched to it. Substack’s algorithm is not doing your work justice, Peter. Your writing is very worthy of a larger following, and people just need to be able to find you. If you switch at the right moment, you might even be able to quit your day job.
Glad no violence✔️
Whiney collectivists and progressives.
Very glad there was minimal violence (there was some, but very little).
Am disappointed that the Democrats once again failed to develop a focused and cogent message of political opposition.
The great danger is not that Trump has authoritarian tendencies, but that without effective political opposition there is little check on Trump’s wielding of Presidential power. That is never a good thing and it will not end well for this country.
Democrats—and Congress as a whole—have ceded entire swaths of the Legislative Branch’s Constitutional authority to the Executive Branch. The United States Congress today is becoming as functionally useless and politically irrelevant as the Roman Senate was during the dictatorship of Julius Caesar as well as Octavian’s rise to power as Augustus, First Emperor of Rome.
Nature abhors a vacuum, and that is particularly true for politics. Congressional diffidence invariably morphs into Presidential prerogative.
The United States needs a Congress energetic enough to push back against Trump’s use of Executive power, not because Trump is an authoritarian, but because there will come a President after him who will be, and who will waste no time in turning the precedent of Trump’s Executive Orders into a pathway to imperium.
I do not want to see the United States going down that dark road.
Very wise words, Peter. What will help preserve the power balance is YOU, and other alternative writers who will continue to call out abuses of power, misinterpretations of the Constitution, etc. If the Democratic Party has become weak and useless, writers speaking Truth will help correct the course!