Some people who disrupted President Donald Trump’s midterm campaign rallies have turned the attention they received into donations or campaign exposure. Trump has said protesters were paid to cause trouble; the examples below show that some raised money afterward, though they do not establish that they were paid to disrupt the events.
At least two protesters solicited donations after their rally appearances. Two others are Democratic candidates for state legislative seats, and some have received support from political groups on the left.
Indivisible, the organization behind the No Kings protests, has connections to several of the people discussed here. Public grant records show that the Open Society Foundations, founded by George Soros, gave Indivisible more than $7.6 million from 2017 onward. That funding does not, by itself, show that the group paid these individuals to protest.
Rob Potylo, who also performs as Robby Roadsteamer, drew the largest reported amount. At Trump’s rally in Chillicothe, Ohio, on Wednesday, he interrupted the event with a song about Jeffrey Epstein. Potylo later posted an unedited video of the incident online.
The video description pointed viewers to a fundraiser titled “Robby Roadsteamer has been detained by ICE in Portland!” The fundraiser had been launched before the rally, but Potylo urged supporters to contribute after he was removed from the event. By Monday, more than 4,600 people had donated a total of $127,831.
After the disruption, Potylo asked supporters to donate and challenged Trump’s claim that he had received $250 to protest. He later said that donations rose after the video spread online. His website also lists PayPal, Patreon, Venmo and Cash App as ways to support him.
Two other people who heckled Trump are running for state legislative seats.
Alan Buckalew was among roughly a dozen people escorted out of Trump’s Oct. 21 rally at Clemson University’s T. Ed Garrison Arena in Pendleton, South Carolina. According to a local report, he shouted, “Why are you selling us out to the Soviets?” Buckalew is the Democratic nominee for South Carolina House District 28 and received an endorsement from Indivisible Upstate SC in October.
Florida Democratic candidate Ben Braver was arrested at Vice President JD Vance’s Oct. 1 rally in Lakeland. Police charged him with trespassing and resisting arrest without violence. He was released on $2,000 bond.
An officer wrote that Braver braced himself against the direction in which he was being escorted, then took him to the ground with a leg sweep. Braver told a local television station he had not meant to resist. A video of the arrest, which he posted on Instagram with a question about whether the police response was appropriate, received 381,000 likes. Vance called Braver a “Democratic plant.”
Braver said he was exercising his First Amendment rights in protest of what he called Vance’s support for “pedophile protectors,” and denied intending to resist the officer.
Braver is challenging Republican state Rep. Karen Gonzalez Pittman in Florida House District 65, in Tampa. He previously ran for the state Senate in 2024 and lost to Republican Danny Burgess by about 21 percentage points.
Emgage Action, a Muslim-American political organization, lists Braver among its endorsed candidates. Open Society Foundations grant records show that the organization and its partner, Emgage Foundation, have received at least $5.5 million from the foundations since 2018.
Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland and Florida NOW PAC have also backed Braver’s campaign. He has promoted Indivisible events and No Kings rallies on social media, including some as campaign appearances. In July, he pledged to end agreements with ICE.
Braver’s activism began before his campaigns. In 2023, while a junior at the University of South Florida, he led Stand for Freedom FL, a statewide campus walkout calling on the DeSantis administration to restore diversity, equity and inclusion programs and to stop what organizers described as attacks on LGBTQ+ students.
Another rally attendee, Timothy Matthew McDaniel, also started a fundraiser after protesting Trump.
At the Oct. 21 rally in Pendleton, McDaniel shouted, “You’re the criminal!” after Trump referred to “criminal aliens.” People at the event restrained him. He later filed an assault report with the Anderson County Sheriff’s Office, according to local news reports.
McDaniel, a 46-year-old Navy veteran who uses the name Matthew on social media, wore a shirt bearing the letters “Foxtrot Delta Tango,” which appeared to be a disguised insult directed at Trump. He describes himself as an independent who supports Democrats.
Three days after the rally, McDaniel launched a fundraiser seeking $15,000 for medical bills, legal costs, reward offers and security. It described Trump as a would-be king and had raised $3,815 when the report was published. McDaniel wrote that he hoped the promised reward money would encourage people to speak up.
His social media posts also show a long-running opposition to Trump. They include an “8647” seashell image as his profile picture, a meme comparing Trump to the Antichrist, and criticism of a local bar that he said attracted neo-Nazis and “MAGA maniacs.” He also promoted an Indivisible early-voting event in Pendleton in September.
South Carolina court records list a Timothy Matthew McDaniel with the same birth year as the protester. The records show guilty findings for reckless driving in 2004, hit-and-run property damage in 2005, public drunkenness in 2005 and driving under suspension in 2010.
Potylo, Buckalew, McDaniel, Indivisible, Emgage Action and the Open Society Foundations did not respond to requests for comment.
