Is the ‘Tactical Frivolity’ of ‘No Kings’ Enough to Make Americans Forget About Real Left-Wing Radicals?

Welcome back to Forgotten Fact Checks. This week, we look at the Left’s efforts to portray itself as anything other than a party of political violence, and cover more media misses.

Democrats Look to Rewrite the Narrative with ‘No Kings’ Protests

Millions of well-meaning Americans showed up to “No Kings” protests across the country on Saturday and went to great lengths — including dressing up in inflatable animal costumes — to distance themselves from the violent, black-bloc radicals of Antifa.

The costumes and general air of harmless mischief are part of what one New York Times writer described as “tactical frivolity.” The protesters succeeded in separating themselves from the Antifa militants who show up in force to engage in lawbreaking. The goofily dressed boomer grandparents who flooded American cities over the weekend are not the same people laying siege to federal buildings or cheering on the assassination of the UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson or Charlie Kirk, at least the vast majority of them aren’t.

These are two separate groups — but the existence of the harmless group does not negate the existence of the violent group, despite what mainstream commentators will try to tell you.

Jimmy Kimmel called Antifa “an entirely imaginary organization,” while NBC’s Chuck Todd said, “I don’t even know what Antifa is. There is no group.” CNN’s Erin Burnett claimed “Antifa-linked violence is rare and limited.”

Have Kimmel and Todd forgotten the Portland shooter who declared his allegiance to Antifa in 2020, or the Alabama Antifa sympathizer who pleaded guilty to setting off an explosive device filled with nails outside the state attorney general’s office? What about the George Floyd protests in 2020, which left the Mark O. Hatfield Federal Courthouse in Portland with more than $1.6 million in damage?

To get more specific for the amnesiac press: An indictment filed against two alleged Antifa members last week shows just how organized and dangerous the group can be:

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This indictment of an Antifa cell in Texas is an interesting read, and puts a stake through the heart of the idea that this is an “idea” and not an organization. In this attack, they shot a police officer in the neck who was responding to their assault on a DHS facility.

Some… https://t.co/ZRhWvRMuKq

— FischerKing (@FischerKing64) October 16, 2025

And as the White House said earlier this month, Antifa militants have “laid siege to the ICE field office in south Portland” since early June. “The terrorists have violently breached the facility by using a stop sign as a battering ram, hurled explosives and projectiles, burned American flags, viciously assaulted, attacked, and injured officers, doxed officers, berated neighbors, and even rolled out a guillotine.”

And things did, in fact, turn violent in Portland on Saturday evening outside an ICE facility:

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Breaking: Federal police deploy endless rounds of tear gas and crowd control munitions to disperse unlawful crowd outside the ICE facility.

War-like scenes as protesters launch munitions back at federal agents, starting fires. Watch the entire clip. pic.twitter.com/Ji0oKIVzYX

— Katie Daviscourt 📸 (@KatieDaviscourt) October 19, 2025

Meanwhile, more than a dozen people were arrested after the No Kings protest in Los Angeles. ABC 7 reports it is unclear what charges they are facing, but police said one officer was injured. The outlet reported small crowds stuck around downtown as the night wore on, leading police to issue multiple dispersal orders. Nearly 100 agitators walked toward Aliso and Alameda, as some pointed lasers and flashing lights at officers and an LAPD pilot.

Eager to distance themselves from their more radical, activist fringe, elected Democrats have gone out of their way to put a relatable face on the left-wing protest movement.

As Politico reported, Senator Elissa Slotkin (D., Mich.) helped organize a social media video of Democratic lawmakers who have served the country in national security roles to encourage people to turn out to the protests. In the video, Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, a former Navy captain and pilot, called on those who have served to “step up for the country we all love” and protest “out of a deep sense of patriotism.”

And the media got the message.

NPR reported that demonstrators were “united in protests to ‘protect America,’” and were peacefully protesting with song and dance.

The New Republic claimed “Republicans Should Be Afraid—Just Look at Who Joined No Kings Protests.”

“For days, Republicans have been claiming No Kings protesters are all agitators and terrorists. Well, America had a different message for them, and for their Dear Leader,” the outlet wrote.

The New York Times published a column on “The Rise of the Inflatable Chicken Resistance.”

“This humorous form of protest, known as tactical frivolity, shows the absurdity of the charge that all the protesters are armed militants. In contravention of the Trump administration’s claims that the protesters were all Hamas agents or antifa interns, the protest in Chicago was wholesome, nonaggressive and almost shockingly middle-of-the-road. It’s hard to call an inflatable chicken dangerous,” author Gary Shteyngart argued.

The Washington Post reported that “The costumes are being donned in part as a rebuke to Republicans portraying the events as ‘hate America’ rallies and the Trump administration’s claims that blue cities like Chicago and Portland are riddled with crime.”

Senator Cory Booker (D., N.J.) shared a Daily Show clip that juxtaposed Trump’s claims of lawlessness in Portland with scenes of dancing protesters. “Funny but true,” Booker wrote.

It’s great that there are millions of Democrats out there willing to dress up as chickens to prove their unseriousness, but let’s not pretend that everyone to their left is playing around too.

Headline Fail of the Week

The New York Times continued its pro-Mamdani slant last week with a headline that read, “Mamdani Faces Islamophobic Attacks After Comments About Hamas.”

After backlash, the paper removed “Islamophobic” from the headline.

As NR’s Noah Rothman writes:

The Times would have been better off scrubbing the item entirely. It is about as deliberately uninformative as a piece of journalism could conceivably be. It fails not only to inform the reader of the basic contours of the event about which she is reading, it does so in such a consciously motivated manner that it makes the reader doubt the paper’s capacity for institutional neutrality.

Mamdani did encounter “vitriolic attacks” that suggested he was a “terrorist sympathizer” from some quarter on the right. Congresswoman Elise Stefanik did, for example, call him a “jihadist,” and one state-level Democratic representative did accuse Mamdani of being “pro-Hamas.” But for what? Only for giving “an indirect answer” to the inquiry by Fox News Channel host Martha MacCallum about his views on the virtue of a terrorist group’s disarmament.

That’s not really what happened, though, is it? Mamdani said he had no views on a subject about which he has never had anything other than a multiplicity of views. And when pressed on the matter during last night’s debate, he gave a far more explicit call for Hamas to “lay down their arms.” Why did the candidate form an opinion all of a sudden? Does it even matter? In fact, why are you so concerned, huh? Sure, a reasonable observer can infer quite a lot from this sequence of events. But the Times regards your capacity for logical inference as not only unjustified but bigoted.

Media Misses
• After Joy Behar claimed Republicans are “scared” to appear on The View, numerous conservatives took to social media to say they had unsuccessfully tried to appear on the show. Clay Travis, Riley Gaines, Matt Walsh, Lila Rose, and Karol Markowicz were among the conservative figures who said their teams had pitched The View their appearances, only to be shot down by producers. Republican Senator Ted Cruz, who has appeared on the show before, was also turned down in 2023 when he wanted to appear on the show during his promotional book tour.

• Former CNN host Don Lemon said people of color in the U.S. should legally arm themselves in case they need to protect themselves from Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. Lemon, during an appearance on The Left Hook with Wajahat Ali, said he was not “condoning or promoting violence” but that he was tired of “the niceties” while ICE agents were “rounding [people] up off the street without due process” and “sending them off to a gulag.”

“If you believe in the Second Amendment, if you believe in the Constitution, Black people, Brown people of all stripes, whether you’re an Indian American or a Mexican American or whoever you are, go out in your place where you live and get a gun legally. Get a license to carry legally,” Lemon said. “Because when you have people knocking on your door and taking you away without due process as a citizen, isn’t that what the Second Amendment was written for?”