‘Pedo King’: In downtown Tampa, more than a thousand ‘No Kings’ protestors line the streets [PHOTOS]

A protestor in downtown Tampa, Florida on Oct. 18, 2025. Credit: Dave Decker / Creative Loafing Tampa Bay

In Tampa alone last Saturday, more than 1,000 people descended upon downtown as part of nationwide “No Kings” protests. The demonstrations were meant to oppose a president who has surrounded himself with lemmings willing to push the country closer to a competitive authoritarianism where a leader is elected into power before eroding checks and balances.

“It is relatively mild compared to some others. It is certainly reversible, but we are no longer living in a liberal democracy,” Harvard professor Steven Levitsky and author of “How Democracies Die,” told NPR last month. 

Signs included some calling Trump a “Pedo King” for his connections to Michael Epstein who killed himself before going to trial on sex trafficking of minors, others decrying ICE’s separation of families, and one calling the president a pendejo (“dumbass”). More continued to sound the alarm on the country’s move towards facism.

This year’s Super Bowl halftime performer even entered the chat, with one protester wearing a flag that said, “Presidents are temporary, Bad Bunny is forever.”

A few MAGA streamers even came out—and emerged unscathed despite the president’s assertion that folks who identify as antifascists are terrorists.

“No Kings” events were planned in more than 100 Florida cities and towns, including Miami, St. Petersburg, and Gainesville.

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This article appears in Oct. 16 – 22, 2025.

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Read his 2016 intro letter and disclosures from 2022 and 2021. Ray Roa started freelancing for Creative Loafing Tampa in January 2011 and was hired as music editor in August 2016. He became Editor-In-Chief…
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