DC Trucker Rally Protest Included Hundreds Of Invisible Ninja Trucks That Nobody Saw
And maybe 20 actual people.
After lots of hype, stories on Fox News, and some really credulous coverage from local TV stations that should have known better, the great big Trucker Rally (Motto: "Just like Canada's if anyone shows") bore down on Washington DC like a rocket sled on rails, filling the nation's capital with not much of anything, because it was a huge failure.
The idea had been that a surge of anti-vaxx truckers and other opponents of public health would drive from the Left Coast all the way to DC, being joined by others as they crossed the country, becoming a mighty USA Freedom Liberty No Step On Snek Convoy that would fill the capital in time for Joe Biden's State of the Union address Tuesday. Surely with the Beltway shut down, the Powers That Be would finally listen!
Instead, about 12 people and no trucks showed up for a rally that ended hours early because we assume eventually the protesters got tired of being reminded there were more bored journalists and cops in attendance than protesters. The poor dipshits couldn't even shout "There are dozens of us! Dozens!"
The nonevent's nonturnout rivaled a 10-person DC protest by the "Ex-gay Pride" movement in 2013, and would have been dwarfed by the hundred or so people who showed up for a pair of 2017 alt-Right rallies. Hell, the 2013 tea-party trucker rally to teach Barack Obama a lesson about the Constitution at least drew a few dozen actual tractor-trailer rigs.
DC television station WUSA documented the astonishing microcrowd :
As the Daily Beast reports, the organizer of the pre-SOTU rally, wingnut MMA fighter and candidate for Maryland governor Kyle Sefcik, had anticipated some 3,000 attendees at least at the "Stage of Freedom" jamboree. Instead, after the ritual Pledge of Allegiance, he mostly just griped about what a pitiful showing of patriots were there.
The rambling speech, which at times took oddly specific tangents, pressed forward with Sefcik wondering where the convoy of truckers—supposedly aiming to disrupt the Beltway area in protest of vaccine mandates, among other MAGA causes—actually were.
“Where are the trucks?! Where are the trucks?!” Sefcik yelled at one point. “I know the ones that I had planned coming… they’re not even allowed in because they need a commercial license and have proof of a checkoff today because of the checkpoints, so they weren’t even able to stage and make it look cool here.”
“But I still showed up, even if none of you did,” he continued. “I’d still be right here because I keep my word.”
Rightwing media and politicians had been hyping the idea of an all-American version of last month's anti-vaxxer trucker rallies that shut down Ottawa and several US-Canada border crossings, but somehow the crowds of truckers and other vehicles never quite materialized. They didn't show up at the Super Bowl, and only one truck set off from Pennsylvania, accompanied by a half-dozen other vehicles, at most. If that guy even made it to DC, we haven't seen it reported.
Still, some kind of trucker protests are continuing; yesterday, Idaho TV station KTVB reported that a convoylet that started out in California on February 23 rolled through Boise, where it was met by a small crowd of anti-vaxx loons from "Health Freedom Idaho," the rightwing anti-vaxx group that pals around with Ammon Bundy and with the far-Right "Idaho Freedom Foundation."
Here's some video of the Idaho crazies gathered along a freeway and on an overpass to wave flags. KTVB's reporter said there were "500 protesters," but either they weren't on video or the reporter took organizers' word for it. Do you see 500 people here?
The video shows a handful of flag-waving trucks and some pickups; darned if we could tell how many, or how many of the smaller vehicles were locals temporarily driving along.
Another video from a different newscast shows maybe 100 people waving and shouting at what appears to be normal freeway traffic. Weirdly, while the reporter says there were "dozens" of protesters, the video's description inflates that to "hundreds." Still, it was a huge day for Freedom, and Idaho's bugfuck nuts militia-friendly Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin showed up to give a speech; she wants to be governor. This particular convoy hopes to reach DC this weekend, perhaps, where surely it will shut down the city unless one of the drivers gets sick from a bad corndog.
In conclusion, we could say more about how inspiring these sparse truck convoys are, but suddenly we are not run over by a truck, because there aren't any.
[ Daily Beast / KTVB-TV / Image: YouTube video by VirtualMakerLuca ]
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I blow mine up every summer and put it on the pond. My only goal will be the western shore!
Just to do some wildly irresponsible speculation, is there a possibility that Russia's inability to move money around in the West have something to do with this convoy thing petering out?