Ted Cruz – Ted Cruz said MSNBC footage was from 2017, not a ‘No Kings’ rally in Boston. That’s False

After large crowds turned out Oct. 18 for “No Kings” rallies across the U.S., some conservative politicians and social media accounts sought to undermine the crowd counts.

One X account^[1] posted, “Analysts are calling this the biggest FRAUD in American history. MSNBC falsely aired a Video from 2017 claiming it was LIVE footage from yesterday’s ‘No Kings’ rally in Boston. MSNBC purposely wanted to portray a massive turnout for ‘No Kings.’ Which was a LIE.” Other X accounts^[2] posted^[3] similar^[4] claims.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, reshared^[5] a post by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., that included the MSNBC footage.

“Why are Dems dishonestly sending around a video from 2017, claiming it was this past weekend?” Cruz wrote.

The footage MSNBC aired is real and depicted Boston’s Oct. 18 “No Kings” rally. The views of the protest that MSNBC aired were similar to others that aired Oct. 18 by four Boston-area television stations.

Cruz’s office did not respond by publication time to an inquiry.

How large were the “No Kings” rally crowds?

Organizers of the “No Kings” rallies — dozens of liberal groups, including environmental organizations and labor unions — estimate^[6] that up to 7 million people attended protests nationally, including^[7] 125,000 people at the rally at Boston Common, a large public park. 

That would make Boston’s rally the nation’s fourth largest^[8] of the day, behind New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C., according to nationally crowdsourced estimates^[9] compiled by G. Elliott Morris, the former editor of FiveThirtyEight.com who now runs a Substack on political data. Morris’ median national estimate for rally attendees was between 5.2 million and 8.2 million people. 

The 2017 Women’s March in Washington, D.C., was estimated to include 470,000 people, according to academic estimates reported by The New York Times^[10].

Crowd counts were scrutinized in 2017 after Trump said^[11] counts comparing attendees at the Women’s March with his inauguration undercounted the inauguration crowd. He falsely accused^[12] the media of lying about his inauguration crowd.

MSNBC did not respond to an inquiry for this article. Using the television monitoring service TVEyes, we confirmed that the MSNBC footage aired^[13] Oct. 18 around 11:35 a.m. Eastern Time.

Four TV stations in the Boston area aired similar views Oct. 18, showing large numbers of people filling the park and temporary structures built for guest speakers. 

WBZ (CBS affiliate)^[14]: 

WCVB (ABC affiliate)^[15]:

WFXT (Fox affiliate)^[16]: 

WBTS (NBC affiliate)^[17]:

PolitiFact partner WMUR-TV in New Hampshire^[18] also aired a similar aerial shot:

CNN on Oct. 18 aired^[19] similar footage that it credited to WCVB, the ABC affiliate.

Grok, X’s AI chatbot, might have contributed to misinformation about the video being from 2017, the BBC reported^[20]. 

Several of the X posts that spread the claim of the footage being eight years old included as evidence screenshots of a proposed community note. Community notes are a crowdsourced system X uses to add context to information shared on the platform.

But a “proposed” community note is one that has not been approved yet. The proposed note shown in the social media posts was written by artificial intelligence, the BBC reported, with supporting links that did not prove that the footage was from 2017. Some Grok responses repeated^[21] the^[22] false^[23] claim^[24] from that proposed community note.

Our ruling

Cruz said Democrats are “dishonestly sending around a video from 2017” and claiming it showed an Oct. 18 “No Kings” rally in Boston.

The MSNBC footage Cruz was referring to was real and showed the Oct. 18 “No Kings” rally in Boston.

Four Boston-area television stations and one in New Hampshire shared similar footage during the stations’ live coverage of Boston’s Oct. 18 “No Kings” protest.

We rate the statement False.