Saturday’s “Million MAGA March” in Washington D.C. failed to live up to its name, in that only thousands of people—nowhere near a million—gathered in the nation’s capital over the weekend to protest the right of their fellow Americans to vote for someone other than Donald Trump to be President.
According to a report from the Washington Post, those gathered at the march heard from a cast of speakers who were conspiracy theorists, among them Alex Jones (who has been sued for accusing the families of the children killed at Sandy Hook of being actors), after getting a glimpse of their head conspiracy theorist Trump, who drove by the people gathered in his name on the way to golf.
During the day the Trumpers marched through the streets against voting, COVID-19, Black Lives Matter, Antifa, and even Fox News (which has begun acknowledging the fact that Biden is the projected winner of the presidential election).
True to form, current White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany hopped on Twitter to continue the tradition of press secretaries in the Trump White House, by outright lying about the numbers of people present for the march, claiming that it was “more than one million”:
A large faction of those gathered in D.C. for the march were the Proud Boys, that extremist group of white guys cosplaying as grown men who’ve done anything to be proud of. As the day went on, the Proud Boys and groups of counter-protestors started violently clashing according to the Washington Post.
From WaPo:
One pro-Trump man attempted to gouge the opposition with a flag bearing the president’s name. Another grabbed a woman’s neon orange poster and hit her with it.
When the women made it to the barrier set up by police across the street, Trump supporters filled the entire intersection, blocking them. Police arrived on bikes and, after several minutes, moved the crowd back. Shortly after, the group began singing the national anthem.
Nearby, on the street beside inscriptions from Abraham Lincoln recognizing the District as a place of freedom, people piled atop a U-Haul truck with a flag of a gun and the words “Come and take it.”
Videos posted on social media show what appears to be a free for all on the streets of D.C. as the day continued, with men sucker-punching each other and the President blaming it on “Human Radical Left garbage,” though it isn’t clear if it was Antifa counter-protestors or his supporters who initiated the violence:
Police presence was also noticeably sparse during the worst of the fighting, despite the fact that cops have had no qualms about violently subduing protests when they are led by Black people marching against racist violence:
Given the hands-off treatment and free reign that these mad and mostly-white people were given to express their anger at facts, reality, and the existence of non-white people in America, there’s no telling what else could pop off on the streets between now and January. If you are considering showing up to one of these things as a counter-protestor, be informed—there are no guarantees that the police will protect you.