Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul even said he’d welcome a similar trucker convoy in Washington, DC and said ‘it wouldn’t shut the city down because the government workers haven’t come to work in two years anyway’
Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul urged truckers to ‘clog things up’ in American cities during a recent interview where he called for a similar Protest to Canada’s ‘Freedom Convoy’ to occur in the U.S.
‘I’m all for it,’ Paul told the Daily Signal on Thursday. ‘Civil disobedience is a time-honored tradition in our country, from slavery to civil rights, you name it. Peaceful protest, clog things up, make people think about the mandates.’
Paul’s comments in his Thursday interview came just after a bulletin from the Department of Homeland Security warned that another convoy could disrupt Sunday evening’s Super Bowl game in Los Angeles.
But a recent report by a social media tracking firm showed that such an event is unlikely, as of Saturday.
The bulletin also warned that a convoy could be timed to disrupt President Joe Biden’s State of the Union in Washington, DC in early March.
‘It’d be great, but the thing is, it wouldn’t shut the city down because the government workers haven’t come to work in two years anyway,’ the Kentucky senator said when asked about that possibility.
‘I don’t know if it’ll affect D.C. It’d be a nice change. We’d actually have some traffic.’
He added: ‘I hope they clog up cities.’
A week-long standoff between police and truckers quickly spread from the capital of Ottowa to fill the streets of multiple Canadian cities as well as key border crossings.
Drivers are blaring their horns and using their rigs to block traffic in response to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau mandating that truckers crossing the border from the U.S. are either fully vaccinated or submit to quarantine requirements.
Some have even escalated their rhetoric, calling for the liberal prime minister to step down from power altogether.
Supporters and truckers front the Parliament Hill during a protest in downtown of Ottawa, Canada, on February 12. A firm monitoring real world threats online said such a protest is unlikely to disrupt the Super Bowl after DHS warned it was a possibility
But while protests and traffic blockades inspired by the Ottawa protests have gained steamed in Australia, New Zealand, and Europe, similar rallies in the United States have been slower to take off despite plenty of chatter in extremist circles online.
On Friday, U.S. organizers, including Penny Faye of an organization dubbed ‘Convoy to Save America,’ told Reuters they were planning convoys for this weekend or early next month.
But a report by Pyrra, a Washington-based firm that tracks the potential of real world threats via social media activity, indicated that there were few signs of something cropping up in Los Angeles on Super Bowl Sunday.
‘I think they ran out of time,’ Pyrra chief Welton Chang said Saturday.
He also cited the lack of consensus around whether the big game was an appropriate target.
A Reuters review of social media has also found little support for a Super Bowl plan.
There was scant mention of the protest on TruckersForFreedom, a popular Telegram channel devoted to sharing news from the protests in Canada and abroad, for example.
A partner channel purportedly devoted to the Super Bowl rally just had a single poll surveying participants on whether they planned to participate in a Super Bowl protest.
Protestors against Covid-19 vaccine mandates block the entrance to the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, on February 12. On Sunday police began making arrests and clearing protesters
The overwhelming majority of the 8,000 users who voted said they couldn’t come.
Meanwhile the ongoing protest in Canada continues despite Trudeau and other elected officials calling on the drivers to disperse multiple times.
On the Ambassador Bridge, one of the main hotspots of the protest that links Detroit, Michigan with Windsor, Ontario, Canadian police began making arrests Sunday after demonstrators refused to move.
It was the first major police action of the week-long demonstration.
‘Enforcement actions continue at the demonstration area with arrests being made. Vehicles being towed. Please continue avoiding the area,’ Windsor Police tweeted on Sunday morning.
On Saturday cops had persuaded some demonstrators to move the trucks they were using to barricade the entrance to the busy international crossing.
Many returned as of Saturday night, however.
Hundreds of uniformed officers were present at the bridge on Sunday morning where they warned truckers they could be charged with criminal mischief, the New York Times reported.
The officers were accompanied by a tow truck that was used to move two pickup trucks blocking their path to the protesters.
