ADRIAN FLORIDO, HOST:
If you watched the No Kings rallies around the country last weekend, you may have noticed some unusual marchers - protesters dressed in inflatable animal costumes. NPR's Frank Langfitt hit the streets here in Washington, D.C., to find out why.
FRANK LANGFITT, BYLINE: Even before they happened, some Republicans cast the No Kings protests in a dark light. House Speaker Mike Johnson called them Hate America rallies. Here's Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
SCOTT BESSENT: This crazy No Kings rally this weekend, which is going to be the farthest left, the hardest core, the most unhinged in the Democratic Party.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
LANGFITT: What they got were frogs, chickens, dinosaurs, even lobsters, in this case, dancing next to the National Gallery here, a short walk from the U.S. Capitol. Scott Rohrbach is a senior optical engineer at NASA. He came dressed as unicorn.
SCOTT ROHRBACH: I would have come as a frog, but I couldn't find a frog, so I have to be a unicorn.
LANGFITT: And why was it hard to be a frog?
ROHRBACH: Well, I can't find one. They're all sold out.
LANGFITT: The protest here in D.C. looked a bit like a carnival.
ROHRBACH: You wouldn't believe the number of people that have asked me for a selfie or to high-five their kids today. This brings joy and hope to people who are in a situation right now that is frightening.
LANGFITT: Rohrbach came out because he fears that under President Trump, future elections may not be fair. He wore the outfit to counter the Republican narrative that protesters like him are anti-American radicals.
ROHRBACH: One of the things fascists can't handle is humor. And they can't handle people responding in a silly or frivolous or humorous fashion.
LANGFITT: President Trump has said repeatedly that he's neither a fascist nor a king.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I work my ass off to make our country great. That's all it is. I'm not a king at all.
LANGFITT: He dismissed the rallies.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
TRUMP: I think it's a joke. I looked at the people. They're not representative of this country.
LANGFITT: And the president responded with his own brand of humor, posting an AI-generated video of him flying a jet and dumping what looked like excrement on No Kings protesters. What inspired Rohrbach and others to dress up like animals?
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTER: Get off.
(SOUNDBITE OF PEPPER SPRAY)
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTER: Oh, [expletive].
(CROSSTALK)
LANGFITT: Earlier this month, a man in a frog suit was trying to help a fellow protester at an anti-ICE demonstration in Portland. Law enforcement responded by spraying the suit's air intake with a chemical agent. Jordy Lybeck, a political streamer, began brainstorming with his viewers.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JORDY LYBECK: How much are those outfits? Are you thinking what I'm thinking? I'm just saying, what if somebody bought a lot of them and distributed them at the facility? You're going to invoke the Insurrection Act against a bunch of [expletive] people in inflatable animal costumes?
LANGFITT: Lybeck and fellow streamer Brooks Brown raised money and delivered more costumes to the protesters. They call it Operation Inflation. The goal - undermined Trump's argument that he had to deploy troops because Portland was, quote, "a war zone."
BROOKS BROWN: The people who are watching at home saw that we were mocking the lies about how Portland is a wasteland of burning nightmares and not a pretty bougie city, to be frank, filled with ice cream and, you know, high-end bookstores.
LANGFITT: Brown also said the costumes make protesters seem less threatening. After all, it's hard to see out of or move quickly in an inflatable suit. Brown said he spoke to a police officer at the protest who thought the same.
BROWN: He said that he knows anyone in these costumes isn't going to be doing something that they've got to run from. Which is fair, because if you haven't been in one of these costumes, you cannot run in them.
LANGFITT: Brown sees a lesson here. He says demonstrators have to change the optics so that government force looks more like farce because it's not easy to portray an inflatable frog or unicorn as the enemy from within.
Frank Langfitt, NPR News, Washington. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
