A right-wing trucker convoy meant to protest restrictions tied to the COVID-19 pandemic has disbanded after ending up with just five trucks. The convoy was formulated according to the model of the trucker convoy protests that recently unfolded in Canada, but this occasion isn’t the first time that an attempt to get something similar rolling in the United States has ignominiously ended. A convoy planned by Pennsylvania trucker Bob Bolus apparently ended up with just one 18-wheeler — driven by Bolus himself — in its ranks, although he and his allies, all of whom appeared to be in smaller cars, still headed towards the D.C. area anyway.
The 'freedom convoy' crew is little annoyed that most eyes are no longer on them.
“They are starting to twist the events by saying oh our suffering is somehow much less. NO IT IS NOT!” – one said, comparing vaccine mandates to being invaded by Russia. https://t.co/D8kqZLxHD5
— Mack Lamoureux (@MackLamoureux) March 1, 2022
In this other case, the effort was called Freedom Convoy USA 2022, and its participants left California last Friday. On Saturday, the group got to Las Vegas, at which point they had just five trucks — leading those behind the endeavor to decide to call it off, asking those involved in it to instead join other groups who are protesting similar issues and undertaking similar tactics. Like other convoy efforts in the U.S., the so-called Freedom Convoy was meant to arrive in D.C. around the time of President Joe Biden’s upcoming State of the Union address, which is scheduled for March 1.
If U.S. truckers involved in the convoy have any sense of patriotism or decency, there would not be a threat constricting DC during an international crisis. Need to pay attention at confluence of foreign and domestic disinformation operations and their affect on domestic churn.
— Denver Riggleman (@RepRiggleman) February 24, 2022
Those behind the failed convoy effort that fell apart in Las Vegas specifically directed those taking cues from them to look to the People’s Convoy and the Texas Convoy; the People’s Convoy left from a stadium in Southern California last week, and the Texas group apparently plans to join up with the comparatively more successful one that originated from California. As those behind the failed convoy put it, referencing those other efforts, they were “making the decision to send any truckers planned to meet at our routes to start heading to D.C. for the event on the National Mall, or to join the convoys named above as they are about to merge into one.”
Imagine planning and then starting your US trucker convoy and literally as you start driving, Russia invades Ukraine and gets 24/7 attention and absolutely no one pays attention to your stupid convoy
— David Pakman (@dpakman) March 1, 2022
In Canada, trucker convoy protests majorly disrupted daily life around their nation’s capital, Ottawa, and hundreds of unarmed National Guard troops have been tapped for deployment to Washington, D.C., to work on efforts like traffic control, as needed in relation to these protests. Although Bolus’s planned convoy from Pennsylvania basically fizzled out, at least in terms of its originally stated ambitions, that doesn’t mean that there haven’t been high ambitions behind these efforts from the outset — Bolus said that members of his convoy were “not coming there just to starve them… We’re going to choke you like a boa constrictor and you’ll have nothing,” but that didn’t work out. “In a series of phone conversations with The Daily Beast over nearly three hours, the circular I-495 Beltway got the best of the duo who couldn’t find their way and got stuck in rush-hour traffic,” that publication reported last week, referring to Bolus and apparent co-organizer Betsy Green.
Law enforcement said the Russian invasion of Ukraine, potential protests of President Biden and a possible trucker convoy headed to the Washington area are all factoring into a heightened security response for the State of the Union address Tuesday night. https://t.co/eSNXSclipg
— CNN (@CNN) March 1, 2022
