Not Enough Paid Instigators?

As far as I can tell, the only extended violence anywhere in the country in yesterday's No Kings Day demonstrations was in Los Angeles, where things had been simmering since last weekend. All I can think is that LAPD somehow talked sense into Mayor Bass and convinced her that the way to stop riots, as was finally done in the 1992 Rodney King episode, was to have the media show people being arrested, not just looting stores. Thus photos like the one above, showing people retreating from tear gas, have finally begun to appear, unlike last weekend's shots of rioters waving Mexican flags:

But also, note that the people in the top photo, retreating from tear gas, are young, countercultural, and dressed to storm the barricades. The people at No Kings Day events anywhere else in the country apparenty weren't in this demographic:

Not...really.

From a basic scan of the pics, it's an insanely old, white, female, middle-middle class (not upper or lower or working), neurotic/masked crowd.

The people at the Army's birthday parade....looked like America. https://t.co/uPglJp7po0

— Wilfred Reilly (@wil_da_beast630) June 15, 2025

A lot of commentators have noted that the No Kings Day organizers had weeks to prepare for the event, even before last weekend's LA riots and Sen Padilla's stunt:

"No Kings Day of Defiance," a nationwide series of protests scheduled for Saturday, was planned as a counter to the military parade taking place in Washington, D.C., on the same day. That parade is being held in honor of the U.S. Army's 250th anniversary, which coincides with Mr. Trump's 79th birthday.

"On June 14—Flag Day—President Trump wants tanks in the street and a made-for-TV display of dominance for his birthday," organizers said. "A spectacle meant to look like strength. But real power isn't staged in Washington. It rises up everywhere else."

But it sounds like pretty much all they could come up with was cat ladies and the sort of people who still wear masks in public, although there are plenty of those left. But I'm still scratching my head about basic questions of prudence:

LOS ANGELES: police are using tear gas and crowd control munitions to break up the crowd

Though I identified as press and had my badges / credentials displayed, an officer still shot me with a rubber bullet

Another shot a tear gas can at me. They are targeting press pic.twitter.com/Y2gWVX4WhK

— E (@ElijahSchaffer) June 15, 2025

Why on earth would anyone deliberately attend an event where there was even the slightest potential for violence? Or even if it was part of your job as a reporter, why would you put yourself into the part of the crowd that was being pushed back or kettled in? But it's also worth stressing that LA was the only place yesterday where anything like this occurred at all. In Philadelphia, the cat ladies calmly marched to the art museum and went home.

Byron York makes a related point in the Washington Examiner:

The RealClearPolitics average of polls keeps a running comparison between the polling of Trump and former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush at the same point in their second terms. Right now, Trump’s job approval stands at 46.6%. On this day in 2013, Obama’s job approval rating was…46.6%. And at this moment in 2005, Bush’s approval rating was a touch lower, at 45.6%.

The presidents and the events of their presidencies were entirely different. And yet, in mid-June of the first year of their second term, all were in almost precisely the same place in terms of job approval.

What does it mean? For one thing, it means the efforts to portray Trump as a uniquely dangerous threat to American democracy — to denormalize him — aren’t working.

. . . The premise of such a critique is that Trump is doing outrageous things that Americans should never accept. The problem is that many Americans, in some cases, majorities of Americans, don’t think Trump’s actions are outrageous. They support what he is doing on immigration. They support what he is doing for the economy. They support what he is doing to cut federal spending on wokeism and Left-wing causes. That’s what is keeping Trump’s job approval numbers in the same place as Obama’s and Bush’s.

The No Kings Day planners had weeks to plan things out, and they apparently had megabucks to finance it, but it fizzled. The only spot that remotely resembled the 2020 BLM riots was LA, but the outcome, after what must have been a week of intense behind-the-scenes pressure on Mayor Bass from law enforcment, was photos of dispirited wannabes running from tear gas and a reporter complaining he'd been hit by a rubber bullet even though he had a press pass. Poor baby.

They had all the Walmart fortune behind them and apparently couldn't hire enough paid instigators. On the other hand, I suspect law enforcement had very good intelligence as well.