On the 53rd night of the protest, a gaggle of #resisters gathered in front of the White House to listen to Kathy Griffin trash talk Trump.

The comedian stood atop a block in front of a crowd of about 100 people, mic in hand, and told jokes that were mostly inaudible, but that people nearest her in the crowd appeared to love. Most held signs that said things like “IMPEACH” or “TREASON” or ‘LOCK HIM UP,’ and a few were wearing full-out costumes (like a mask of President Donald Trump and an orange prison jumpsuit). Also on hand were a couple of Trump baby balloons, a bevy of American flags, and a four-foot cardboard puppet with an image of Trump on one side and Vladimir Putin on the other.

“If you’re a Facebook resister, that’s good for you,” Griffin told DCist at the Capital Hilton a few minutes before her ‘protest roast’ of the president. “But these are the people that are willing to get off their butts and get out of their house, even if it’s 1,000 degrees in humidity.”

She’s not wrong. By the time I visited, some of these protesters had gathered in front of the White House—which they’ve taken to calling the “Kremlin Annex”—every single night for nearly two months, since the day Trump returned from that infamous Helsinki trip. October 9th marked the 86th straight day of protest for this small but dedicated group of people determined to get on the president’s nerves. And they have no plans to stop.

“This is a lot of days in a row, and we all have jobs. We work 8-to-5 and then we have dinner and come out here from 7:30-to-9,” says Jeff Morgan, a Washingtonian who estimates he’s come to a few more than half of the protests. “But also it’s kind of a good time, you know?”

Morgan gestured to the crowd behind him, half of which was lined up to meet Kathy Griffin, the other half of which was dancing around to the music that had started playing. They do look like they’re having fun.

“This [protest] is different. While we carry a serious message [in that] we’re standing up for American values, a free press, everything else, we do it in a way that combines music and entertainment with the serious message,” says Alexandra Chalupa, a former Democratic National Committee contractor and one of the organizers of the #KremlinAnnex protest, as it’s known on Twitter. “If we were just out here shouting and chanting every night, it would have lasted one night.”

Instead, organizers have called on a number of political—and actual—celebrities to create a draw. Texas Representative Joaquin Castro and Stormy Daniels lawyer Michael Avenatti were two notable early guests, as was actress Alyssa Milano. In early August, Rosie O’Donnell showed up with 55 Broadway musical performers and led them in song. About a month later, Kathy Griffin followed up with her roast.

There have also been a series of other gimmicks: an 18-person mariachi band to serenade Trump, a “birthday party” for Special Counsel Robert Mueller complete with a game of ‘pin the indictment on the traitor,’ a Russian translator to “help Trump understand our message,” repeated playings of The Beatles’ ‘Back in the USSR.’

The whole production started in mid-July, shortly after Trump’s trip to Helsinki, where he appeared to side with Vladimir Putin over his own intelligence agencies on the matter of Russian interference in the 2016 election. Philippe Reines, a former Hillary Clinton spokesperson, sent out the fateful tweet: “If someone flew home from Helsinki they’d get back to DC around 9pm. Probably jet lagged. You know what I’d hate if I just got back & needed to sleep? A bunch of people outside my home with bullhorns & air horns. I’ve never started a protest. How does one do that @MoveOn?”

The #KremlinAnnex protest—then trending as #OccupyLafayette—was born.

A day after the first protest, a few key organizers sought out the involvement of the Party Majority PAC, a Democratic Super PAC created last year by some former Bill and Hillary Clinton staffers. Adam Parkhomenko, a political consultant and adviser to Hillary Clinton who co-founded the PAC last year, was heavily involved in the early days of the protest, securing Michael Avenatti to come speak the second night. (Reines is no longer very involved in the protest, though he supports it, organizers say.)

Party Majority bankrolls the whole operation, paying for everything from sound equipment to security for notable guests to ponchos when it rains. It takes donations through the Kremlin Annex website, though treasurer Lazar Palnick says the donations go to the PAC, not only to the protest.

Palnick says it costs about $4,000-$5,000 to run the protest per week, depending on how expensive the guests and speakers are (an 18-member mariachi band is rather expensive to book, as it turns out). The protest pays local musical guests small amounts to perform, but does not pay its celebrity guests directly—those costs are incurred by things like transportation and security, Palnick says. There are a few people earning money regularly to keep the protests running (charged with organizing the sound equipment and hauling it to and fro, for example), but Palnick characterized their compensation as nominal.

Every night at 7:30 p.m., those few staffers corral guests and speakers to the White House and start the party. On rainy days, the number of tried and true protesters can be as few as 30-40. On bigger days, they can number more than 100.

The protest also employs a local musician, Justin Johnson (whose artist name is Yaddiya), as an MC and talent booker. Johnson has been to every single night of the protest starting from about five days out, and has filled the role of anti-Trump hype man, leading chants and introducing guests. He books D.C. musicians like Steelo Soul and Ace Ono to perform every night, filling the gaps in their performances with chants. Johnson makes the protest musical on purpose—his chants sound more like songs, with drums, bass, and guitar in the background.

“With a melody, people remember it better. You might leave there singing one of the songs I was singing later, you might find yourself singing it the next morning,” Johnson says.

The “Kremlin Annex” action isn’t the only long-running protest the White House has ever seen. Concepcion Picciotto famously protested wars abroad in Lafayette Park nearly every day from 1981 until her death in 2016.

But the tone of the “Kremlin Annex” protest is unusual. With all the costumes and the props and the signs and the music, it’s mocking and angry, but also celebratory. It kind of feels like a group of friends gathered together to celebrate a shared—and very intense—hatred.

It’s also different from other anti-Trump protests in that it’s not a response to any particular event, like, say, last week’s protests against now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The people at #KremlinAnnex come every day, rain or shine, to protest what they see as the generally unacceptable nature of the Trump administration and the president himself. There are some consistent protest themes that encapsulate the issues they see: Trump as puppet, Trump as baby, Trump as Russian.

That’s not to say the protests don’t respond to current events at all: Kavanaugh’s fraught confirmation to the Supreme Court inspired #MeToo signs and protest events, and news of sky-high death tolls from Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria inspired a talk by Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez and Puerto Rico solidarity signs.

Perhaps the most enduring concerns among the people I spoke with, however, had to do with Russia. Several protesters say they think of Trump as a shill for Putin, and they worried he was trying to put Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court as a way to ensure some kind of protection against indictment, should Mueller’s FBI investigation head in that direction.

Iryna Verity, a public relations consultant who has been active in local Democratic circles (and who brings the sound equipment to the protest every night), said that she has serious concerns about Trump’s relationship with Russia. Verity is a Ukrainian-American who says that what’s happening with the president “literally reminds me of a slowly-rolling Soviet Union coming to the United States.”

She’s taken an active role in helping put the protests together because of her daughter, she says.

“I have a 20-year-old daughter who’s a student in college, and I owe it to her,” she says. “I don’t want to be saying later, ‘oh, I was just against Trump.’ I want to do more.”

For his part, Morgan says that coming to the protests has resulted in new friendships with other people who share his level of horror and exasperation with the administration.

“It’s been nice to make friends and talk to people where you can say, ‘Can you believe what happened today?’ And they already know what happened, and you don’t need to explain it or tell them why it’s a big deal,” he says.

He thinks that he and other regular protest-goers, at the end of the day, have just got more stamina.

“Most of my friends don’t really like Trump, but they only really want to talk about it for like three or four minutes, and then they want to talk about football or basketball or baseball,” says Morgan. “I’m the only one who … well, maybe I just don’t get tired of talking about it.”

This post has been updated to reflect that Kathy Griffin showed up on the 53rd night of the protest, not the 54th.

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