The CEO of Crowds on Demand, a California-based company that provides paid protesters, revealed that his firm turned down a $20 million offer to help organize nationwide rallies against President Donald Trump.
Adam Swart told NewsNation’s Brian Entin on Tuesday that interests “aligned with the organizers of the July 17th movement” approached him with the massive contract. Swart said he refused the deal not out of principle, but because the operation would be “ineffective.”
The CEO of “Crowds on Demand” tells me he was offered $20,000,000 to recruit demonstrators for the anti-Trump protests on Thursday. pic.twitter.com/2A6ezwo0cc
— Brian Entin (@BrianEntin) July 15, 2025
“It’s Going to Make Us All Look Bad”
“This is going to be ineffective. I’m not trying to call myself virtuous for rejecting it. It just wouldn’t work,” Swart said, adding that the contract would have involved “huge demonstrations around the country.”
The protests are being organized by a group called Good Trouble Lives On, which brands itself as a peaceful protest movement. Their target: Trump and what they describe as “the most brazen rollback of civil rights in generations.”
Another Astroturf Operation
The group’s planned protests coincide with the fifth anniversary of the death of Democrat Rep. John Lewis. But critics say this is just the latest in a series of staged protests meant to make the anti-Trump movement look larger than it really is.
“These people are paid to show up and pretend there’s mass outrage,” one Trump official told Fox News Digital.
White House Fires Back
“President Trump’s America is so successful that blue-haired basement dwellers are paid to stage fake protests against the administration’s remarkable achievements,” said Harrison Fields, Trump’s principal deputy press secretary.
“Paid agitators should find real jobs instead of selling out for gift cards and meager paychecks. Nothing screams a party in disarray more than one that clearly lacks organic support and is forced to astroturf everything,” he added.
