Why frogs, chickens and T. rexes are taking over anti-Trump protests

“It’s impressive how these ‘protesters’ constantly find ways to make themselves look even dumber,” spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement.

Costumed demonstrators emerged most prominently this year in Portland, Oregon. Local activists have tapped into the city’s counterculture history by staging deliberately absurd protests outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility, even as Trump was calling the city “war-ravaged”.

One recent viral video from Portland captured federal agents pepper-spraying a protester in an inflatable frog costume. People in other cities began dressing up at protests, too. Brooks Brown, a streamer based in Portland, was inspired to co-found “Operation Inflation”, which solicits donations to provide free inflatable costumes for people to wear at anti-ICE protests.

“It cuts across any narrative: You can’t say, ‘Oh look that’s antifa, the terrorist organisation’,” Brown said. He added that the costumes helped keep demonstrations calm and discouraged angry rhetoric: “When you have the inflatables, everyone starts dancing, and even the people who are very serious, they continue what they’re doing, they’re disciplined … but they’re not angry. There’s not an angry vibe behind them.”

Brown estimates that about 10,000 people have donated in the 10 days since the group started. For the No Kings protest on Saturday in Portland, he rented a U-Haul trailer and spent days preparing. All the costumes were shipped to his home. When protesters showed up at the truck, Brown said he helped them turn on the costumes’ battery packs, inflated them and sent them on their way.

The most popular costumes have varied. Initially, frogs were popular, then sausage dogs. Then giraffes after a man dressed up as a giraffe was arrested.

“People see that and they are infuriated and they want to support that situation,” Brown said. “They want to let people in power know: ‘That’s me too. I stand with wiener dog, I stand with giraffe, I stand with frog army’.”

Political strategists on both sides of the aisle said the costumes were an effective way to protest against the Trump administration.

Democratic strategist Andy Barr compared the use of inflatable costumes to the time a man in a dolphin costume followed Mitt Romney around during the 2008 Republican primary, accusing him of flip-flopping.

“Everything is so dark and kind of bleak that by making this sort of fun and funny and kind of a bit, you bring more people in,” Barr said.

Republican strategist Terry Sullivan said the use of inflatable costumes was “smart” and “gives extra legs to a story”.

“When you can give a visual example, it helps,” he said. “It’s trying to draw attention to the protests so that it doesn’t look and frame it in such a way that it’s just a bunch of angry people with purple hair throwing rocks.”

Stanford University political science professor Bruce Cain said while there was always a risk that a costume “can project frivolity and a party-like atmosphere”, the use of costumes countered “the image of the Democratic Party as a violent party”.

Cain added that Trump’s portrayal of cities as violent was a “very important concept” as he sought to expand executive authority and invoke emergency powers. Trump has repeatedly suggested he could invoke the Insurrection Act, which allows the president to use active-duty forces trained for combat overseas or federalised National Guard troops to suppress a “rebellion”.

“If the president is going to invoke the Insurrection Act, he has to go to the court and show them, ‘Here’s some violence’,” Cain said. “It seems to me if you were going to start a fight you wouldn’t want to be looking like Mickey Mouse.”

In Portland, where Trump is seeking to send the National Guard, daytime protests tend to feature a crowd of mostly homegrown activists, but at night, the scene has sometimes turned violent.

In Washington, Jonathan Matias, 45, stood with the crowd on Pennsylvania Avenue on Saturday in a bright yellow banana costume and held a poster that said: “America is NOT a Banana Republic.”

Matias said his outfit was “a great way to say, ‘Hey, we’re not violent. We’re not domestic terrorists. We’re not pro-Hamas, all the things you’re saying. We’re peace-loving, friendly neighbourhood Americans.’”

The Washington Post

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