The Reagan Faulkner Show
UNCW Student and nationally recognized young Republican, Reagan Faulkner shares her unique insights into the issues of the day.
The Reagan Faulkner Show
Episode 4: No Kings
In Episode 4: "No Kings" of her podcast, Reagan Faulkner takes a critical and often skeptical look at the recent "No Kings" protest movement spreading across the U.S. Rather than joining in the enthusiasm of protestors rallying against supposed authoritarian threats, she scrutinizes their messaging, motivations, and the accuracy of their grievances. Faulkner opens the episode by questioning whether the movement’s rhetoric—invoking fears of kingship and tyranny—truly reflects political reality, or if it amounts to political theatre driven more by social media trends than by genuine threats to American democracy.
Faulkner dissects the core arguments put forth by "No Kings" supporters, noting inconsistencies and what she sees as overstatements in their claims of creeping autocracy. She interviews both participants and critics of the protests, highlighting how much of the movement’s energy appears rooted in dissatisfaction with the current administration, but she argues that such activism sometimes devolves into hyperbole or even hostility without a constructive agenda. Faulkner is especially pointed in her analysis of the performative aspects of recent rallies, calling attention to incidents where protestors’ conduct contradicted their calls for civility and order.
In her concluding reflections, Faulkner warns listeners against accepting protest messaging at face value and encourages deeper critical thinking about both current events and the lessons of U.S. history. She argues that honoring America’s tradition of rejecting monarchy means more than just chanting slogans—it requires responsible citizenship and respect for institutional checks and balances. Reaffirming her commitment to open debate and civil society, Faulkner invites her audience to engage with skepticism, urging them not to be swept up by crowd mentality or narratives that oversimplify complex political realities.
Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Reagan Faulkner Show. Now, I don't know about you, but when I woke up on Sunday, I was ecstatic to see that the No Kings protest worked and that we still did not have a king in the United States of America. What we did see, however, was a ton of demonstrations with overzealous inflatable cartoon animals. Nursing home residents and liberals that honestly didn't really know what they were protesting.
Family Guy Clip:What do we want? We don't know. When do we want it? Also unclear. Why do we want it? Because it was forwarded to us in an email, so it must be true. Yeah.
Reagan Faulkner:I think that family Guy skit really sums up exactly what we saw this weekend. Now for a little bit of backstory. The No Kings protests had their biggest first turnout on June 14th, 2025, coincidentally Trump's birthday and the Army's 250th birthday, where he had a huge military parade and demonstration across Washington, D.C. so the liberals, the left, whoever you really want to call them, dubbed June 14th, no Kings Day, citing the authoritarian, quote, rule of Donald Trump and all the policies that they thought he had overreached with and violated the Constitution with. So that was really where it all started and gained momentum was on this June 14th day. However, there were some minor No Kings protests on Presidents Day and also in April. But really it hit on this June 14th day. And then as we saw over the weekend, on October 18th, we had a second round of major demonstrations across all 50 states and some of the biggest cities in the United States. And the New Kings coalition actually came out with a press release and said that they are protesting, quote, President Trump's abuses of power. I don't really know what that means, and I don't think they do either. I can't quite understand what the quote abuses of power are. I know they're very upset about fake Ice agents, which they're fake. So I don't think that that has anything to do with Donald Trump. And everything else that he's done has been completely constitutional, to the point that it's been upheld by the Supreme Court. And if any of it has been questionable, the Supreme Court has come out and said, hey, that might not be constitutional. Let's take a closer look at that, as they did with some of the due process cases earlier this year. But really, when interviewed, a lot of these demonstrators couldn't quite put together what they were protesting or why they were out there, as we'll see in some of the following clips.
Interviewer #1:Is there any decision in particular you disagree with where?
Protester #1:Okay, so I would start with, um. Well. I don't even think. I don't even think it's appropriate for me to have this interview.
Protester #2:Rob us of our freedom. He's trying to rob us of our rights. He's trying to control everything.
Interviewer #2:Like what? What specifically has he done that is an example of that.
Protester #2:Um, where the ice is coming into these cities and they are separating families.
Interviewer #3:Tell us about your outfit.
Protester #3:Um. You're from who?
Interviewer #3:Tampa weekly.
Protester #3:Never heard of.
Interviewer #3:You. We're a media company in Tampa. We're just trying to interview people. Figure out the vibe of today. What problems need to be solved.
Protester #3:Trusting your vibes.
Interviewer #3:What do you mean?
Protester #3:What do you think? What I.
Interviewer #3:Mean. We liked your costume. We just want to ask you what's going on. We do? It's a Halloween outfit. Or what is the premise behind it?
Protester #3:You look like Charlie Kirk fan. Get away from me!
Interviewer #3:Excuse me. Sir?
Protester #4:Yes.
Interviewer #3:You look good. I like your outfit. Thank you. Can you tell us a little bit about the motive behind it?
Protester #4:Yeah. Alright, cool. You guys heard about the QAnon shop?
Interviewer #3:I have not. Tell us about.
Protester #4:It. I don't know about him, but I am the Antifa A magician. We're going to make fascism disappear.
Interviewer #3:What's step one to making it disappear?
Protester #4:Do what's in your heart.
Reagan Faulkner:So, as you all can see, they really didn't have a strong rationale for why they were there. What they were protesting, or any of the stats or logic behind the claims that they were making. We heard a lot about Ice immigration, Trump's, quote, authoritarian rule and violations of the Constitution. But when asked to explain further, a lot of these demonstrators replied with hostility, a lack of wanting to converse or have discourse, and even just straight up rudeness. Now, another really interesting thing about these demonstrations were that the protesters were literally dressed up in costumes. We saw inflatable Pokemon characters, inflatable animals like axolotls and ducks, and even people dressed up like historic US figures and images like Lady Liberty. But they couldn't explain the purpose behind these irrational costumes and inflatables and all of that. We saw people with face coverings on with masks. They weren't necessarily being violent. But also, why are you wrapped up in a scarf or in face coverings if you're not going to do anything wrong? The entire the entire event was illogical and made no sense, and the demonstrators could not even put their finger on what was happening or why it was happening. Interview after interview shows them tripping over poor logic and reasoning and their motivation for being there. But really, aside from the costumes and the reasoning and the rationale and the lack of wanting to talk to reporters and independent journalists, the most glaring takeaway from this whole thing was the age. We saw demonstrators that were in their upper 60s, 70s and on up. On average, there were no Gen Z, Gen X, millennial, gen alpha representation. Nothing like the conservative movement where we see all of these Gen Z and Gen Alpha and even millennials that are paying to go to Memphis and the Chapter Leadership Summit and the Student Action Summit. We see so many young people, like I said, Gen Z, Gen Alpha, even older people that are paying to go. But there's not this mass movement of youth on the left. And when they have demonstrations like the No Kings protest, we see people where it looks like they're being bussed out of nursing homes to attend, and there might be a one off here or there. I know some people that I go to school with went to the No Kings protest, so obviously there are young people there, but not in the drives and droves that we see Gen Z participating in politics on the right, within the conservative movement, within the Republican Party. And one of the most glaring ironies that I see is Republicans have been accused of being the party of old white men for decades. Whenever I hear specifically a young girl talking about politics. They're like, oh, you're part of the old white man party. Like, no, actually, there have been so many young conservative women that have gone to the Republican Party. There have been young men, there have been such a large amount of people, um, even minorities. We've seen a lot of minorities migrate to the Republican Party in recent years and even just this past year alone. But that's not something that they really want to talk about. They still want us to be the party of old white men, and we're not. We have grown so much as a party, and we really see the left just shriveling away with that diversity and that youth vote. And now, honestly, they're kind of the party of old white men. I mean, they're the party of Biden's and Chuck Schumer's and all of those politicians. Nothing like the Conservative Party, where we have such a diverse array of people, from Marco Rubio to African American senators and representatives and just so many different types of people in the Conservative Party. But aside from that, what else happened with the No Kings protest over this weekend? Well, first, they are claiming that they had 5 to 7 million people turn out, which is also being claimed that it's this mass movement, this huge historic moment. But is it really? I don't think anybody is questioning the 5 to 7 million turnout. I think that that's probably a pretty accurate number. I went to the one in Raleigh and there were definitely a couple thousand people there. So personally, I'm not going to question how many people turned out, but let's look at some stats for comparison. So in 2016, the Chicago Cubs won their championship and they attracted a total of 5 million people to their celebration. And that was in one city in a single state, for one team, for one celebration. 5 million people, almost the entire total of how many people turned out to the No Kings protest across the entire state, across multiple cities in each state, multiple rural towns, almost the same amount of people turned out to one celebration for one team in one state and one city. Additionally, 25 million people tuned in to Donald Trump's inauguration this past year. That is nearly 4 to 5 times the amount of people that turned out to these no kings protests that had work, that had families that had other responsibilities, that were able to tune in and watch the inauguration as it happened live. And for more comparison in 2020, excuse me. In 2024, the US had a population of about 341.96 million people. So if we look at the amount of attendees to the No Kings protest and we look at this number from 2024, it's a turnout of about 1.46 to 2.05% of our entire population. That's pretty small in the grand scheme of things. And that's the group that is the people that filled out their census, the people that were legally accounted for. Likely that number is higher, which means likely the percentage of people that turned out to these protests is lower. So it's not exactly this mass movement that the media wants us to think it is. It's not the mass movement that social media wants us to think it is. And it's not the mass movement that the No Kings coalition as a whole wants us to think it is. It's pretty small, but it's the same thing that the left has always done. They are just extremely, extremely loud about it. And their inflatable costumes and lack of logic and bullet points for knowing why they're there. So now that we've kind of recapped what we saw this weekend, what happened, and seen a little bit of who attended and what they had to say, let's take a look at some of the problems with the overall movement, the overall No Kings coalition, and kind of what they stand for and where some of these lack of reasoning and illogical fallacies are really taking place. So number one, we haven't had a king since 1783. We haven't. Don't even get me started on them trying to call Trump a king, because Trump was not the party that was trying to put mask mandates into effect, or vaccine mandates, or silencing different and opposing ideas through social media, and having the government send out things to social media companies telling them to pull certain ideologies down and certain posts down. That was not Trump. That was never Trump, that was never Trump's party. So don't even get me started on calling him an authoritarian king. I have a lot to say about that that we won't go into on today's episode. But he also can't become a king because constitutionally it just can't happen. We have checks and balances. We have three branches of government. We have all of these things in place to make sure that it doesn't happen. And even if kind of what the left is trying to proclaim that, well, he's appointed people and he has a Supreme Court that's on his side, and his appointees will just keep affirming what he's saying and what he's doing. They won't stop him. The Supreme Court will back everything. We have not seen that the Supreme Court has called out things that they thought were constitutionally wrong. The conservative Supreme Court has done this. They've stopped Trump. They've said, hey, illegal immigrants need due process. We can't do these certain things because of that. Like they have stopped him from doing certain things and they're not going to let him become a king. They're just not. The Constitution will prevent that. Additionally, if the US is actually incredible danger of having an authoritative rule of having a king, of establishing a monarchy. I personally hope maybe maybe I'm the only one. But I personally hope that the people that are trying to protect me from it will not be going out an Axolotl and Pikachu inflatables not knowing what they're talking about. If we were in credible danger, I would like to think that the movement that was protecting us would be acting like we had a little bit more at stake. And also, if Trump was a king and was authoritative in nature, these protests couldn't happen. He wouldn't allow it. The fact that they still have the free speech to go out and do whatever it is they think they're accomplishing, literally disproves their point that we live in an authoritative state, because if we did, they wouldn't be able to do this. The whole thing is just absolutely irrational. And to keep talking about irrational, let's talk about who's funding these protests. None other than our best friend George Soros. Now, Soros Open Society Foundation funded about $3 million in grants to indivisible, which is the primary backer of the no protests and the No Kings coalition. They did this in 2023. Now, between 2017 and 2023, Three, they funded about $7 million in grants to this same organization. So Soros has been readily behind it. Old white billionaire. Everything that they claim to be against. And on top of that, Christy Walton, billionaire heiress to the Walton family of Walmart, has also been cited as a significant contributor to the funding of the organizations that are supporting and backing the No Kings protest and the No Kings coalition. And a lot of the entities that are making this possible. I'm not saying that they're paying protesters or anything on TikTok. I've been called out for saying that they're paying protesters. I'm not saying that. But in order to make these events and demonstrations and movements happen, there has to be organization and there has to be funding from different coalitions and different community groups. And these community groups have to pay their employees who are putting this together and making the marketing materials for it and everything. And the money that is being poured into these community groups is being funded by Soros and Christy Walton and other big time donors, big time millionaires and billionaires. And then we have our publicly vocal political supporters like Chuck Schumer, Bernie Sanders and Hakeem Jeffries. And in order of net worth, Chuck Schumer's is about 2.665 million, Bernie Sanders is about 3 million, and Jeffries is about 9 million. And then other very wealthy, very prominent liberal politicians have also been publicly supporting this. So we all thought the left and the No Kings protest was about standing up for the little guy, right? For the blue collar worker and the single mom and the poor family that's fighting to pay rent, and that they were really against the oligarchy. They hate. They hate Elon, right? They hate that Trump has become friends with Tim Cook and is working with him. But in reality, the donors, the people supporting these protests, they are the real oligarchs. They are the wealthy ones. They are the ones that do not have the best interests of the poor, average American at heart. They are the ones that we ought to be afraid of. Not Elon Musk, not Tim Cook. It is the ones that are backing these protests that want to see Communism and Marxism come into America. And off of that note, it's actually the Communist Party of the USA and Democratic Socialists of America that have publicly endorsed many of these protests in specific geographical regions. I know specifically, New York City is one of them, and there have been others. You can look it up, but, um, it's very obvious that these parties have publicly endorsed, not paid for, not contributed to, but publicly endorsed these protests, these movements and these no kings demonstrations on June 14th and on August 18th. And historically, it's communist governments, socialist movements that have brought about authoritarianism and the loss of free speech, the loss of rights, the The militarization of the, um, country. It has been those movements that have brought it about historically, not Donald Trump trying to bring back our economy. Not people that are trying to do the right thing. Not administrations that are putting their faith in Christ and praying before they make decisions and have a faith coalition, not those not those administrations or groups. It is Marxist, communist, socialist movements and governments that have historically been the ones ripping the rights away from Americans. Well, not American citizens, but citizens across history, across Russia and the Soviet Union, across the Middle East. It has been those types of governments historically, not not governments, that really are trying to do the right thing in the name of God, in the name of Christ, as we see President Trump doing and his administration. So with that, I want to shed a little bit of light on this. Oh, we need to protect democracy. Nonsense. Well, first, the US is not a pure democracy, nor has it ever been a pure democracy. We are a constitutional republic, which means that we elect the representatives to serve and to do the will of the people through a democratic process, through elections. And the Constitution is in place to protect the voters, the people, the constituents from big government up here. It's to protect the little guy. And it's also to make sure that our representatives are following the rules and making decisions based on the will of the people. So the Constitution is like a rulebook for them to protect us from government overreach. And we can also be classified as a representative democracy, which basically means that we democratically elect Representatives to do the will of their constituents. But we have never been a pure democracy. None of this is a pure democracy. A pure democracy would mean that every single American would have to vote on every legislative change, every new law, new bill that another fellow American proposed. And our founding fathers actually said that this was a bad idea, that a pure democracy was a bad idea, because it would lead to uneducated Americans making tangible decisions that would impact legislative practices, laws, things like that, um, when they might not be specialists on that topic. Kind of think about it like if you were doing an agriculture bill and somebody who worked, um, maybe manufacturing would be voting on things and making decisions about agriculture, that wouldn't make sense. Which is why we elect representatives who know things and who are specialists in certain areas to go and do the will of the people in our local House of reps, our local Senate, or our National House of reps, National Senate and the executive level. It is a way for us to make sure that specialists, that's why we have committees. Actually, it's a way to make sure that people who are specialists in that area are doing the will of the people in the area that they practice in, and it prevents corruption, um, poor voting choices, things like that. It is better. It is more secure. Having the form of government that we have than a pure democracy. But the left has proclaimed that they are here to protect democracy. They are fighting for democracy. They are fighting for something that the United States has never practiced in its pure form, like they are proclaiming. They are out here saying, oh, it's for democracy, it's for this, it's for that. But in reality, we have never practiced that in a pure form. We are a constitutional republic or a representative democracy. And the constituents, the people chose Trump by popular vote and by electoral college. We chose Trump. So nothing about securing democracy makes sense as we haven't practiced it in its pure form. Like I've said a million times, and the constituents voted in who they wanted, there was no corruption, there was no difference. Things that were done in the election that were lacked integrity or whatever. There was none of that. It was fair and square. He won. And I think I saw on Twitter or TikTok or something, people were saying that it's classic, oh no, my team lost and now I'm gonna go cry about it. That's basically what they're doing. Kamala didn't win and they want to cry about it, and they want to fret about it because they're Never Trumpers. It's not about democracy or about authoritarianism or about any of it. They just don't like Trump. They have Trump Derangement Syndrome, and they just need to go and scream about it wherever they can, whenever they can, and honestly, at a much deeper level than that. The these protests just go way, way further, way further. When we look at the communism and Marxism and socialism groups that are supporting them or endorsing them, I should say. But even here at UNSW, we're starting to see where these protests are going. Deeper than people just dressed up in silly costumes talking about nonsense. We actually had a couple of professors here at our school, um, offer extra credit to anyone who went to these new protests and wrote a little excerpt or a small essay about it. And when our conservative friends talked to these professors and said, hey, can I write it about this conservative speaker that came to our campus this week or this other event that I went to? We had Shane Winnings, um, conservative activist and very, very strong in his faith, CEO of Promise Keepers. And we actually had former president Mike pence come to our campus this past week when they wanted to write about that. They weren't quote unquote activism events. They weren't activist in nature, and therefore they weren't really able to be written about unless the student emailed the professor and fully and completely explained how or why these events, these speakers were activist in nature, which I think we can also say, how is the No Kings protest activist in nature? What are they actually accomplishing or doing? There are no petitions. There's no specific change being forced. There's no quote unquote activism happening. It's a bunch of people gathering with signs that are honest to goodness, just cussing out President Trump and cussing out anybody that voted for him. And they're just crying about it and talking to each other and screaming and walking around in the street. But they're not really activating anything or doing anything or accomplishing anything. And the events that our fellow friends went to were educational in nature. They were firing conservative students up, making them want to go out and talk to other people on campus and have discourse. And we all know we've talked about it. Colleges are places of exploring different ideologies right and left. But what these professors are pushing is only an exploration of leftist ideology. And honestly, at a more concerning level, we're also getting this image that left wing students and students that are willing to go partake in this left wing ideology are deserving of better grades if they're the only ones that can get extra credit. If the only way that you can get extra credit or a higher grade in your class is to go to these liberal activism events, we're really showing favoritism to a certain student group, a certain student ideology, and the UNC system actually prevents schools from giving any political affiliation, any favor to any group of students, religious, political, etc., etc. so by allowing this across the country, universities are violating their oath of not picking favorites or having a certain ideology that they want to push, but they're also just furthering the idea that colleges are indoctrination stations of radical left agendas. So what can we do as conservatives? We see all this happening. We're watching TikTok and looking at comments of the ridiculous things that are happening in the street. But what can we do? Well, first, we have a duty to research the true intentions behind these protests and who's backing them, who's funding them and what their purposes really are. Even who's endorsing them? Um, you have a responsibility to learn about this and to do your research and to tell your friends, to tell your local GOP, to tell your kids, tell whoever, so that they really know that there's more at stake than just a little gathering in the street. Across all the cities, all the states in the country. Like there's more to it than that. And we have a responsibility to learn that and to hear the other side and find out what they're really trying to say. If even, you know, hopefully they know what they're trying to say, which with these protests, maybe they don't. We also, as students, need to stand up to our professors that are pushing these leftist ideologies and silencing the conservative ones. Like I said, colleges are a place of exploration and discourse, and by pushing one agenda, you don't get a multifaceted 360 degree view of all these different ideas and an ability to explore and learn and all of those things. If it's only one agenda that's being pushed, one protest that's being pushed, one ideology that's being pushed on you just you don't you don't get that. And that's not what college is about. So at its core, these protests are not about unity or saving democracy. They are about halting the actions of a legally elected presidential administration, about stopping the Save America movement, stopping Ice agents, stopping everything that the Trump administration is trying to do and illegally doing. That is what these demonstrations are about. It is about the illegal stopping of a legally elected presidential administration through force, through hostility, through all of that. But it also about the push of socialist and communist and Marxist ideology that these 2% of protesters don't really know about. But these million and billionaire financial backers, they do know about these different political action committees and coalitions and community groups they know about. And that's why, as Americans, it is up to us to know what we are protesting and why we are protesting it. And that's why it's so scary and so frightening that so many of these people don't know what they're protesting, because they're pushing a narrative and they're pushing an agenda that they aren't even aware of. And more than likely, they wouldn't be okay with if they truly knew what the end goal was. So I fully support the right to protest, the right to free expression. Everything in your First Amendment. But we can't do it with naivety. We must do it with critical precision, with knowing exactly what we're protesting and why. Because otherwise we are just pawns to oligarchs, as our leftist counterparts would say. We are pawns to these oligarchs, pushing an agenda and pushing different things that they might want that we surely wouldn't want. Thank you so much for joining me on this week's episode of The Reagan Show. If you enjoyed today's content, be sure to like, comment, follow, and subscribe. Next week, we'll be exploring more hot takes and cultural issues across the US. But in the meantime, be sure to follow us at the Reagan Faulkner Show on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok and the Wilmington Standard on Instagram and Facebook. Also, remember to look us up online at the Reagan Faulkner Show and the Wilmington Standard. Thank you all so much and see you next week.