Over the weekend, some of Donald Trump’s supporters gathered in the streets of Washington, D.C., to express their support for the president’s false claim that the recent presidential election was “rigged” against him. There’s no evidence supporting this claim — and the Department of Homeland Security itself has characterized the recent election as the “most secure in American history.” That’s not exactly an equivocating assessment. Nevertheless, the president and his allies have persisted in their angry self-delusions. At the weekend Trump “march” in D.C., ten arrests were reported by D.C. police. The offenses sparking the arrests ranged from firearm violations to assault on a police officer.
Check out a rundown below:
JUST IN: DC Police confirm 10 arrests at today’s Million MAGA March, Stop the Steal rallies:
4 people for Firearm Violations
2 people for Simple Assault
1 person for No Permit
1 person for Assault on a Police Officer
2 people for Affray/Disorderly: @TomLynch_, @nbcwashington https://t.co/Ne8OoVlAOC— Shomari Stone (@shomaristone) November 14, 2020
The president and White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany both brazenly misrepresented the size of the crowd that was at the Saturday Trump event in D.C., which was billed — at least in large part — as the “Million MAGA March.” On Twitter, McEnany claimed that over a million people turned out for the event, which is just utterly untrue. The crowd wasn’t almost at a million, either — The Washington Post, which had reporters on the scene, characterized the crowd size as topping out in the “thousands” range, despite the president’s own deceptive claim that “hundreds of thousands” of his supporters were at the event. Deceptive and ludicrous claims about crowd size have been a running feature of Donald’s time in the public spotlight, all the way back to the infamous lie that the audience for Donald’s inauguration was the largest of any U.S. presidential inauguration ever.
Notably, the violent far-right hate group known as the Proud Boys was at the D.C. Trump event over the weekend. Wildly enough, even far-right agitator Alex Jones made an appearance. Jones recently appeared at a pro-Trump protest following Election Day in Arizona, where he encouraged onlookers to “surround the White House and support the president.” Just to be clear about Jones’s totally unhinged perspective on the world — in August, discussing so-called “globalists,” Jones said that his followers should be prepared to “kill as many of them as quickly as possible” in a “defensive” way. He also said that his followers should be “ready to die.” This utterly unhinged, mind-numbingly ignorant babbling is what recent demonstrations like the “Million MAGA March” are providing a platform for.
Check out some footage below:
Proud boys outside the Harrington hotel before marching to Walgreens for cigarettes and then to Freedom Plaza for the MAGA rally and march to the Supreme Court pic.twitter.com/w6NLWZzXbh
— Evy Mages (@EvyMages) November 14, 2020
Alex Jones arrives at Freedom Plaza for the MAGA rally pic.twitter.com/L7E8qdB8bb
— Evy Mages (@EvyMages) November 14, 2020
