Asra Nomani@AsraNomani
EXCLUSIVE: The hidden $250K machine of 9 paid vendors behind the 'flagship' #NoKings protest in St. Paul, Minnesota
I followed the money behind the No Kings protest in St. Paul, Minn., and uncovered an estimated $250,000 paid to 9 vendors to produce an event that was about the size of a Def Leppard concert.
Sources said that the Democratic nonprofit Indivisible paid the bill. It didn't respond to numerous requests for comment.
How did I piece this together?
Well, I have a rule when reporting on the protest industry: be the first there and one of the last to leave.
That’s how I met Slamhammer Sound & Roadcase Co. production manager Matt Svobodny, one of the very nice hard-working members of the production crew behind the scenes in St. Paul, as they were breaking down the set for the No Kings protest, long after Bruce Springsteen and most of the anti-Trump protesters had left.
He was straightforward, candid and matter-of-fact about what it takes to throw a protest and, a few days later, guided me -- and you -- through the warehouse where Slamhammer stores the equipment it pulled out for the protest.
He provided the kind of transparency that the secretive nonprofits behind the protests should actually be providing to citizens and the media.
See for yourself:
➡️ the mobile stage
➡️ the speakers
➡️ nearly a mile of heavy-duty feeder cable used to distribute electricity throughout the rally site and the ballistic
➡️ bullet-resistant barriers that shielded the Bruce Springsteen, Jane Fonda, Joan Baez, TIm Walz, Ilhan Omar, Randi Weingarten and the day's other bold-faced names
WATCH the video that I recorded ⬇️
Thank you to Fox News Digital's Hannah Brennan for her work editing the video.
In our new @FoxNews Digital exclusive, I lay out how the "flagship" protest in St. Paul wasn’t spontaneous, like most of the media reported.
It was professionally engineered.
And that raises a bigger question: When protests look like productions…who’s really behind the curtain?
I answer that question in the article and the thread below 🧵👇
A former Obama and Biden administration political strategist and campaign operative Roger Fisk takes credit for being the "Senior Advisor to the #NoKings flagship event," fine-tuning the "art and science" of throwing the St. Paul protest, along with two other "No Kings" protests last year. Fisk didn't respond to a request for comment.
The protests have parroted Chinese government propaganda, demonizing America as a "fascist" nation and Trump as a "king." Partners in the protests were pro-communist groups funded by Neville Roy Singham, a tech tycoon living in Shanghai.
@DataRepublican, You'll want to read this.
READ: foxnews.com/politics/behin…
Behind the scenes, I identified 9 vendors that were paid an estimated $250,000 to construct the protest:
➡️ Slamhammer Sound & Roadcase Co. — mobile stage, 100-speaker sound system, lighting, 1,700 ft cable, ballistic barriers → estimated $100,000
➡️ Fire Up Video — 4 jumbo screens → estimated $20,000
➡️ Algorithm, an AV company — 2 jumbo screens → estimated $25,000
➡️ Common World Productions — 2 LED stage screens → estimated $10,000
➡️ Warning Lites of Minnesota — bike-rack barricades → estimated $15,000
➡️ E5 Energy — generators, electrical distribution → estimated $15,000
➡️ Ultimate Events — tents, chairs, tables → estimated $30,000
➡️ On Site Companies — ~300 porta-toilets → estimated $25,000
➡️ Fast Kat Connects — high-speed internet → estimated $10,000
Total: an estimated $250,000.
This wasn’t a rally that just “popped up,” as CNN reported.
It was built, truck by truck, cable by cable, screen by screen. 🧵 with how it worked.
