Capitol rally to support Jan 6 rioters attracts media frenzy but few protesters

WASHINGTONâ€"“I know that many here and many watching are upset about the election, I’m upset too,” Matt Braynard told the crowd at the “Justice for J6” rally in front of the Capitol building on Saturday, in support of those arrested during the insurrectionist riot by Donald Trump supporters that took place Jan. 6. “But the reaction that we saw on Jan. 6: it was stupid. It was wrong.”

It was a strange point â€" the organizer of the whole protest in defence of those arrested Jan. 6 outlining why he thought those who rioted Jan. 6 were stupid and wrong. Peaceful protests â€" like this one â€" Braynard said, were the way to make a real point. “This is what terrified them!”

If I’m being honest, it wasn’t a line that got the crowd going much â€" more grumbling than cheers greeted it. Of course, if I’m being honest, there wasn’t much of a crowd there to get going.

Police? There were a whole lot of those. Lined up with riot shields and helmets behind fencing enclosing the Capitol grounds; on long lines of bicycles beside rows of dump trucks blocking off the streets; on motorcycles and in helicopters and beside their parked cruisers lining the blocks all around. Every cop in D.C. was on duty, and the National Guard had troops waiting at the ready in the armoury.

Press? Oh yeah. It’s my honest estimate that there was one member of the accredited press there for every protester.

The most representative moment of the morning came maybe a half an hour before the protest was officially scheduled to start: a lone woman stood before the Capitol building waving a pole on which hung an upside-down American flag. As she stood silently â€" an actual protester at a time when they appeared few and far between amid all the lanyards and shoulder-mounted TV cameras â€" she was surrounded by first a handful, then a dozen, then perhaps three dozen members of the press, snapping photos and video.

It’s a fair bet that every single person who showed up to the rally carrying a sign (“Harmless patriots suffer in solitary while rioting infiltrators looters and arsonists are indulged nationally!” for example, or “Jan. 6 jailees should sue the SWAMP”) will appear on a newscast or in newspaper somewhere. At many points, journalists were lining up to interview the same people.

Police estimate the total attendance at the rally â€" not including their own officers â€" was 400-500 people. As I said, it appeared half of those were members of the press. I’d say another 10 per cent were tourists who wandered in off the mall to see what was going on. Another quarter seemed to be counterprotesters, carrying signs reading things like “Do the crime, do the time,” and “There is no right of insurrection.”

The ratio of those seeking to free the Jan. 6 arrestees to those arguing they deserved to be locked up ensured a lot of loud face-to-face debates between them. Each of these, of course, drew a wide and dense circle of media observers.

At one point two graybearded men with anti-insurrection signs faced off with a gray-haired man on a bike shouting at them that the election had been stolen from Trump.

“They pulled the suitcases out from under the tables after all the votes were supposed to be already counted. It was on video. The whole world saw it,” the guy on the bike said, repeating a widely debunked fraud claim.

“The problem is you guys don’t want to understand what was actually going on in that video. The governor of the state is a Republican! The Secretary of State is a Republican! There was no fraud,” said one of the other guys.

“Then let’s put it all on the table, have a proper audit like we’re doing down in Arizona!”

This drew laughter from a nearby crowd more anti-Trump than otherwise.

Suddenly a guy in a loud-print shirt who looked like he might be a Weird Al Yankovic impersonator started shouting: “Look at this! Like 30 reporters surrounding a plain old argument between two Boomers! It’s Boomer TV, tune in and see what the Boomers are cranky about!”

Among those in the crowd that were attending to support the Jan. 6 arrestees, a variety of other messages were prominent. Only a few wore MAGA gear or held pro-Trump signs (since the organizers had asked them not to), but more carried signs calling Biden a traitor, and condemning immigration (“Congress has a fence but America doesn’t”), COVID vaccines, pedophilia, the FBI, communism and Nancy Pelosi. Among the most popular notions among those attending was that Black Lives Matter protesters were the real threat to America, and that they had been let off easy while the Trump supporters were persecuted.

Braynard wore a blue suit with a white shirt and a red tie, like the former president whose campaign he worked on. He was flanked all day by an identically dressed security man in sunglasses wearing an iPhone earbud in one ear.

Braynard and the other speakers at the rally emphasized their demand for protesters to remain peaceful, chastised the crowd for booing mentions of police, press or Democratic politicians, and repeatedly condemned the violence and property destruction of the Jan. 6 riot. But they argued that many of the protesters arrested Jan. 6 just wandered into the Capitol building and committed no violence, and that they were being denied due process and being treated poorly in the prison system. Braynard mocked the idea that the riot had been an “insurrection” and said the only reason it is characterized that way is because of the political leaning of those in attendance.

“God Bless you all,” Braynard closed. “America first, America forever! Now go home please.” And soon enough, without much incident, they did.

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