‘Muted’ No Kings Protests Draw Puny Crowds Compared to Past Anti-Trump Events

CORAL SPRINGS FL – OCTOBER 17: Florida Residents are seen protesting during No-Kings Day Rally on October 17, 2026 in Coral Springs, Florida. Credit: mpi04/MediaPunch /IPX

Only President Donald Trump’s biggest haters could muster the energy to attend the latest “No Kings” protests, apparently.

The fourth round of coast-to-coast “No Kings” protests were relatively limp and failed to attract anywhere near the number of rabid anti-MAGA demonstrators as prior events, according to a slew of reports on Sunday.

Take Chicago, for example. The Chicago Tribune reported it was a “muted Saturday” where no “central rally” was held.

“And at the ones that did take place, fewer people attended,” the report said, before noting, “At the rally in Evanston, a few hundred people showed up, compared with the few thousand who attended the event there in March.”

It was a similar story in Reno, Nevada. At the October 2025 rally, between 18,000-21,000 people were estimated to have shown up; on Saturday, organizers said 2,700 people attended.

The rallies in New York City don’t look like they came anywhere close to past events, either. Most reports give a vague “thousands of people” estimate for the latest NYC rallies, which would fall well short of the rally last October, where more than 100,000 people attended. It would also seem to fall short of the rally in March, where the NYPD said “tens of thousands” of protesters participated.

Local ABC 7 reported on Saturday, “Hundreds of people gathered in Manhattan’s Washington Square Park to listen to music, hear speakers, including the Rev. Al Sharpton, and register voters.”

Reports from around Washington, D.C. indicate the latest rallies were smaller too.

But some of those attendees got to watch ex-CNN reporter Jim Acosta take the stage for a few minutes and perform a bit of a standup comedy routine in which he suggested Trump was gay. He was basing that on the president’s comment earlier this week about Sen. Jon Husted (R-OH), where Trump said he “looked at his ass” as he was “examining” the lawmaker’s body.

“Donald Trump was at this rally in Ohio, did you see this the other day? He’s in Ohio and he’s talking about this guy’s ass! Did you see that?” Acosta told the crowd, which drew a few laughs. “He was talking about the guy who’s running for the Senate in Ohio who’s about to lose to Sherrod Brown (D) — oh yeah, there’s an election coming. Anyway, Trump’s talking about what a nice ass he has, did you see that the other day?”

He then closed with his punchline: “I don’t think Natalie Harp has anything to worry about. That’s just me.”

Maybe the fifth round of protests will be a little more lively.

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