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Saturday’s “No Kings” protests drew millions of Americans out into the streets to voice their opposition to President Donald Trump’s increasingly autocratic, authoritarian governance. On Monday, the ACLU declared that over five million people had assembled across 2,000 demonstrations. That number was echoed by other organizations partnered with “No Kings,” which was organized to counter the “dictator-style” military parade Trump organized for his own birthday.
While the liberal opposition has been trumpeting its impact, the Trump administration has been muted about how many people showed up to his parade, which ostensibly also honored the founding of the U.S. Army 250 years ago.
In a statement to Rolling Stone, a spokesperson for America250 — the public arm of the congressionally authorized U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission, which organized the parade — offered an eye-popping estimate, suggesting that “250,000 patriots joined us on Saturday, despite the threat of heavy rain. In addition, more than 60 million Americans tuned in across streaming platforms and traditional broadcast media.”
250,000 would, implausibly, put the parade attendance on par with the turnout for historic gatherings including the 1965 March on Washington for Peace in Vietnam, and Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 March on Washington, where he delivered the “I Have a Dream” speech.
The estimate of 250,000 on the 250th anniversary of the Army at an event titled “America250”? It’s a little on the nose, and does not match on-the-ground reports of turnout.The White House sent Rolling Stone a link to a Department of Defense tweet stating that “HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of proud Americans” attended the event. The White House would not clarify how many hundreds of thousands, or what entity had produced that estimate.
Saturday’s parade was, at least officially, staged to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the formation of the U.S. Army. Unofficially, the $45 million pageant of tanks, battalions, choppers, and bombers was the fulfillment of President Trump’s long held goose-marching fantasies. The fact that it took place on his birthday was (legally) a coincidence.
The parade felt less like the imposing show of military might envisioned, and more like a mobilized display for military history aficionados. And turnout reflected it.As previously reported by Rolling Stone, attendance at the parade was light for an event whose staging disrupted large swaths of Washington D.C. Risers intended to be packed with enthusiastic Trump fans remained underfilled throughout the parade. The lawns around the Washington monument, which had been blocked off in anticipation of a huge gathering, remained sparsely populated, even as the attendees coalesced in front of a central stage to hear the post-parade lineup of speakers, including the president.
It wouldn’t be the first time Trump and his allies have gone to war with reality over crowd sizes to sooth the president’s ego. One would struggle to forget his 2017 meltdown over the size of the inaugural crowd during his first term. On Jan. 6, 2021, the president demanded that security be loosened around the Ellipse in order to pack the crowd at his now infamous “Stop The Steal” speech. (He later claimed that he’d drawn a bigger crowd the 1963 March on Washington. He had not.) As previously reported by Rolling Stone, during the 2024 campaign cycle, Trump privately obsessed over the size of crowds attending the rallies of his opponent — former Vice President Kamala Harris — at one point accusing her campaign of manipulating images of the crowd with AI.
After videos of squeaky tanks, half empty grandstands, and soldiers marching out of step went viral on social media, the parade became the subject of widespread mockery. Not out of disregard for the Army and its history, but because the entire event felt like a poorly executed effort to entertain the man who is currently deploying active duty Marines to Los Angeles to support Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids against migrant communities and intimidate those who oppose him.
In Los Angeles — where anti-ICE protests and clashes with law enforcement have been taking place for more than a week — “No Kings” organizers estimated 200,000 people turned out for the city’s demonstration. The New York Police Department estimated that 50,000 marched in Manhattan. In Boston, a joint gathering of Pride Month revelers and No Kings protesters drew an estimated 1 million attendees over the course of the day. Even in smaller cities like Anchorage, Alaska; Louisville, Kentucky; and Tuscon, Arizona, “No Kings” protests managed to draw thousands into the streets. In line with organizer estimates, an independent number cruncher pegs total “No Kings” turnout at between 4 and 6 million.
The Trump administration may choose to bury how many people actually showed up to the Mall to watch the president’s Army’s birthday parade, but what they cannot hide is that millions more chose to take to the streets all around the country to reject him.
