Donald Trump supporters morning protests turn into violent clashes
Image via AP.

Pro-Trump protesters
Clashes include fistfights, clubs, projectiles, stabbing, arrests.

Several thousand supporters of President Donald Trump in Washington protesting election results clashed with counter-demonstrators with fistfights, at least one stabbing and at least 20 arrests.

Several other cities on Saturday also saw gatherings of Trump supporters unwilling to accept Democrat Joe Biden’s Electoral College and popular vote victory as legitimate. Cries of “Stop the Steal” and “Count Every Vote” continued in spite of a lack of evidence of voter fraud or other problems that could reverse the result.

After night fell, the relatively peaceful demonstrations in Washington turned from tense to violent. Videos posted on social media showed fistfights, projectiles and clubs as Trump supporters clashed with those demanding they take their MAGA hats and banners and leave. The tensions extended to Sunday morning. A variety of charges, including assault and weapons possession, were filed against those arrested, officials said. Two police officers were injured and several firearms were recovered by police.

Trump himself had given an approving nod to the gathering Saturday morning by dispatching his motorcade through streets lined with supporters before rolling on to his Virginia golf club. People chanted “USA, USA” and “four more years,” and many carried American flags and signs to show their displeasure with the vote tally and insistence that, as Trump has baselessly asserted, fraud was the reason.

“I just want to keep up his spirits and let him know we support him,” said one loyalist, Anthony Whittaker of Winchester, Virginia. He was outside the Supreme Court, where a few thousand assembled after a march along Pennsylvania Avenue from Freedom Plaza, near the White House.

A broad coalition of top government and industry officials has declared that the Nov. 3 voting and the following count unfolded smoothly with no more than the usual minor hiccups — “the most secure in American history,” they said, repudiating Trump’s efforts to undermine the integrity of the contest.

In Delray Beach, Florida, several hundred people marched, some carrying signs reading “Count every vote” and “We cannot live under a Marxist government.”

In Lansing, Michigan, protesters gathered at the Capitol to hear speakers cast doubt on results that showed Biden winning the state by more than 140,000 votes.

Phoenix police estimated 1,500 people gathered outside the Arizona Capitol to protest Biden’s narrow victory in the state.

Protesters in Salem, Oregon, gathered at the Capitol.

Among the speakers in Washington was a Georgia Republican newly elected to the U.S. House. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has expressed racist views and support for QAnon conspiracy theories, urged people to march peacefully toward the Supreme Court.

The marchers included members of the Proud Boys, a neo-fascist group known for street brawling with ideological opponents at political rallies.

Multiple confrontations appeared later in the day as small groups of Trump supporters attempted to enter the area around Black Lives Matter Plaza, about a block from the White House, where several hundred anti-Trump demonstrators had gathered.

In a pattern that kept repeating itself, those Trump supporters who approached the area were harassed, doused with water and saw their MAGA hats and pro-Trump flags snatched and burned, amid cheers. As night fell, multiple police lines kept the two sides apart.

Videos posted on social media showed some demonstrators and counterdemonstrators trading shoves, punches and slaps. A man with a bullhorn yelling “Get out of here!” was shoved and pushed to the street by a man who was then surrounded by several people and shoved and punched until he fell face first into the street. Bloody and dazed, he was picked up and walked to a police officer.

The “Million MAGA March” was heavily promoted on social media, raising concerns that it could spark conflict with anti-Trump demonstrators, who have gathered near the White House in Black Lives Matter Plaza for weeks.

In preparation, police closed off wide swaths of downtown, where many stores and offices have been boarded up since Election Day. Chris Rodriguez, director of the city’s Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency, said the police were experienced at keeping the peace.

The issues that Trump’s campaign and its allies have pointed to are typical in every election: problems with signatures, secrecy envelopes and postal marks on mail-in ballots, as well as the potential for a small number of ballots miscast or lost. With Biden leading Trump by wide margins in key battleground states, none of those issues would have any impact on the outcome of the election.

A former administration official, Sebastian Gorka, whipped up the crowd by the Supreme Court by saying, “We can win because he did win.” But, he added, “It’s going to be tough.”

____

Republished with permission from The Associated Press.

Associated Press


9 comments

  • Gerry Adams

    November 15, 2020 at 9:15 am

    The greatest failure of the people is that they will do nothing to ensure that the next election will run smoothly. They ignore the problems and voter suppression issues, and then they complain.

  • Adam lemone

    November 15, 2020 at 3:28 pm

    It’s time for conservatives to stop allowing the fascists to keep pushing us around. They want violence. Give it to them.

  • Ocean Joe

    November 15, 2020 at 4:03 pm

    No, it’s time for everybody to learn what the terms fascist, socialist, and communist really mean, and for all of us to recognize that an authoritarian/dictator can arise from any of the three and that one tried real hard but got squashed at the ballot box before he could burn the Reichstag again.

  • Booner

    November 15, 2020 at 4:06 pm

    Rabble-Rouser Seb Gorka is still on the run from a Hungarian arrest warrant for weapons and ammo infractions. Too cowardly to face the music.

    A borsht-red right wing ideologue, Seb Gorka could not attend NSC meetings as Trump’s “counterterrorism advisor” because he tried to take a firearm onto a commercial flight in 2016. Seb flew the coop out of the West Wing one week after his fine feathered grifter friend Steve Bannon got kicked out of the WH.

    All these grifters out to stir up trouble. Innocent people had to mix with the extremists at the MAGA march. They’ll all go home and spread COVID to everyone they meet.

    Trump’s a loser, too stupid to be anyone, even more pitiful than a second rate tinpot dictator on the level of Phillipines Duterte, Brazil’s Bolsonaro, and the Thug in Belarus.

  • James Robert Miles

    November 15, 2020 at 7:49 pm

    So what else would you expect from Trump’s fascist supporters? True to form, Trump eggs them on! January 20, 2021 can’t come soon enough!

  • martin

    November 16, 2020 at 6:50 am

    James Robert Miles; tell the truth. It was BLM and ANTIFA who started the trouble. Just as they always do. As your boy biden would say; “you are lying dog-faced pony soldier” if you think otherwise.

  • Robert

    November 16, 2020 at 11:27 am

    It’s always BLM and antifa who start this shit. It’s was perfectly fine for the vast majority of the day. Stop it with the lies.

  • James Robert Miles

    November 16, 2020 at 1:02 pm

    @Robert, @nartin Your GOP extremist party thugs are responsible for this as usual. Your are both delusional in your blind support for your dear fascist leader. He has created the divisive hatred that he is famous for. Wake up and grow a brain if that’s possible. I am sure that you get all your false “news” from faux “news” or one of the other right-wing so-called “news” organs. I don’t listen or watch ANY CORPORATE MEDIA! I just have a brain and I use it!! Trump lost so GET OVER IT!

  • martin

    November 17, 2020 at 7:40 am

    James Robert Miles; you are truly the north end of south bound mule.

Comments are closed.


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