EXCLUSIVE: The hidden $250K machine of 9 paid vendors behind the 'flagship' #NoKings protest in St. Paul, Minnesota I…

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.

2 / Who is Roger Fisk, one of the men that production manager Matt Svobodny told me he worked with closely to organize the No Kings protest in St. Paul, Minnesota? Fisk is called a "PR guru" and was a former political operative in the Obama and Biden administrations. Watch this video that I made from Fisk's own talk to get a glimpse into his very deliberate strategy to use the media to win free press -- called "earned media" -- for Obama in 2008 and now the "No Kings" protests. As I report at @FoxNews Digital, Fisk describes himself as a "Senior Advisor to the #NoKings flagship event," in a post on LinkedIn after the protest. He takes credit on LinkedIn for developing the "thematic strategies and program frameworks" for No Kings protests, including the two protests held last year. Read the full article here for links to Fisk's LinkedIn accounts of his role in organizing the No Kings protests: foxnews.com/politics/behin… So the bottomline: a well-established Democratic political operative, Roger Fisk, is behind the strategy for the #NoKings protests that vilify President Trump as a "king" and smear the United States as a "fascist" nation. In his LinkedIn post, Fisk recalled the "complexity" of organizing the St. Paul event, noting, "Add to that satellite trucks, cable runs, ballistic glass, road closures, most of the bike rack [sic] in North America, risk monitoring and threat analysis, bridge construction, Springsteen, a kaleidoscope of law enforcement, and staffs of elected officials, security details, and other celebrities that require specific care and respect. The final week was 4 am to 9-10-11 pm…" Fisk added that "we have learned so much together in developing the art and science of these massive pro-democracy public engagements." Fisk and Indivisible co-founders Ezra Levin and Leah Greenberg didn't respond to requests for comment. On LinkedIn, Fisk bluntly acknowledged the protests were staged for the cameras for maximum media coverage, which public relations officials call "earned media," a buzzword for free press coverage. "Earned media is my main metric," Fisk wrote, "and our content reached between a quarter and a half billion impressions in the 24 hours after the events, with our flagship event leading the way." In his LinkedIn profile, Fisk writes that he worked this past year as a consultant to Indivisible and its earlier "No Kings" protests, saying he "developed thematic strategies and program frameworks for Indivisible’s three pro-democracy mobilizations, engaging 15 million people across every state and 22 countries coordinating messaging across messaging networks." He didn't disclose how much he had been paid. As you can see in the video, one key to his strategy is "earned media" through free press coverage. Until now, the media hasn't reported on Fisk’s role as a mastermind of the #NoKings protests.

3 / As we previously reported at @FoxNews Digital, about 500 organizations with an estimated $3 billion in annual revenues sponsored, endorsed and participated in the nationwide protest. The network includes stalwart Democratic nonprofits including Indivisible, MoveOn and the ACLU, which have received millions of dollars over the years from billionaire George Soros and his Open Society philanthropies. Another network tied to the protests includes pro-communist groups, like the People's Forum, CodePink, the ANSWER Coalition and the Party for Socialism and Liberation, backed by American-born tech tycoon Neville Roy Singham, who lives in Shanghai, promoting messaging aligned with the Chinese Communist Party, President Xi Jinping and the People’s Republic of China. Notably, anti-American rhetoric from China labeling the United States as "fascist," "rogue," and "autocratic" has been parroted by these groups and surfaced as a recurring theme in the St. Paul protest, where communist and socialist organizations flew the flags of Iran, Venezuela and Cuba. Singham didn't respond to a request for comment. READ HERE: foxnews.com/politics/behin…

4 / COGNITIVE WARFARE — Propaganda expert Nancy Snow @drpersuasion told me: “We are in an age of cognitive warfare, in which there is a competition to shape how people think, and it's always important to follow the money because it tells you who is setting the agenda and amplifying the message.” “Following the money doesn’t automatically invalidate the grievances of citizens who show up for a protest,” she said. Both things can be true at once." @mirandadevine, I thought you’d like to see: I’ve marked in red in the photos in this 🧵the equipment and logistics that an estimated $250,000 helped buy to set the stage for political theater 🎭 : video screens, tents, tables, chairs, bike-rack barriers, a massive stage, generators, electrical cables, even ballistic, bullet-resistant barriers.

5 / The vendors are refreshingly matter-of-fact about their jobs. “You need a platform for people to stand on and a way for people to be seen and heard in order to reach everybody," Matt Svobodny, a production manager with Slamhammer Sound & Roadcase Co., a live-event production company based in nearby St. Louis Park, Minn., told me @FoxNews Digital.  "And, in order to do that, you need professionals that know what they're doing and are going to do it also safe for all the people…," he said. "So you can't just have people with good intentions and no idea what they're doing." Marked in red in these pictures is the infrastructure of today’s professional protest industry. @RepJasonSmith @WaysandMeansGOP @ItsYourGov @GOPoversight @JudiciaryDems @SenJudiciaryGOP @JudiciaryGOP