One of the members of the “People’s Convoy” has claimed they had “millions” of people supporting them along the way as they drove from California to Washington, DC.
Members of the convoy, which is protesting vaccine mandates and other public health pandemic restrictions, met with Republican Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin at the US Capitol on Tuesday.
“When you’re driving under these overpasses and you look up at the people’s faces and millions, millions... it was tens of thousands and then turned to hundreds of thousands ... I have never seen a presidential candidate, or at any level, have what we just had,” one member of the convoy told the senators. “And I think that speaks volumes.”
“We’ve already won because we’ve opened their hearts and once their hearts are open they can’t be closed,” he added. “I’m really upset that none of our congressmen and senators and stuff like that ever came out to give us the time of day up till this point and we appreciate you guys so much for that.”
Mr Johnson noted that he was elected amid the success of the Tea Party movement within the Republican Party in 2010. “I still don’t belong here, quite honestly,” he said. “But my rallying cry means that you do belong here. The rallying cry back then was that this is a fight for freedom. It’s not someone else’s fight. It’s our fight. It’s a fight we have to win.”
He added that the People’s Convoy “is way more powerful” than the Tea Party movement. “And I think it’s far less partisan.”
Mr Cruz said that the convoy was made up of “men and women of every race and creed” who “are standing up for freedom, standing up for a very basic and simple principle that it ought to be your decision how to live your life”.
“It ought to be your decision how to treat your body and what to do with your own health. And in crisis, character reveals itself,” he added. “And in the age of Covid, we have seen too many petty tyrants who believe they have the power to make personal health care decisions for you, and even worse, to make health care decisions for your kids.”
The meeting came as the convoy continued taking laps around the DC Beltway in a bid to stifle traffic after its efforts to do so the two days prior were thwarted by regular commuters who broke up the chain of protesters.
But People’s Convoy organiser Brian Brase told reporters they’re committed to being heard.
“We’ve made it pretty clear what our plans are,” Mr Brase said in response to a question from The Daily Beast. “We’re gonna keep looping the Beltway until we were heard. That hasn’t changed anything.”
He added that it was “day three now doing that”.
“We’re currently riding to two wide occupying two lanes,” he said, estimating that the convoy is “probably about six, seven miles long”.
“The first day we did it, we were 64 miles long, because we occupied one lane,” he said.
“We’re not going anywhere. We’re not gonna leave. We’re gonna keep doing what we’re doing until we start getting more meetings like we just had today,” he added.
“Our demands, you want to say, have been pretty clear. End the state emergency, end the vaccine mandates,” Mr Brase told the press. “Let’s start holding both our elected and unelected officials accountable for their actions that led to this, through bipartisan congressional hearings and investigations into the origins of the pandemic. And the federal government’s and state governments’ response to this pandemic.”
More than 959,000 Americans have died from Covid-19, according to data compiled by The New York Times. According to figures from Our World In Data, more than 77 per cent of Americans have received at least one dose. More than 65 per cent are fully vaccinated, and almost 29 per cent have received a booster shot.
