Rallies this weekend in Olympia, Salem, and Washington D.C. drew small crowds. The events were organized in support of the January 6th rioters. Sergio Olmos was at the event in D.C.
This transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB, I’m Dave Miller. We start today with a recap of the Justice for J6 rally which happened in Washington DC this past Saturday. There were big fears leading up to it that, like the January 6th melee it was in response to, it could become violent. That didn’t happen. As reporter Sergio Olmos put it “It was attended by dozens and covered by hundreds.”
Sergio was one of those hundreds and he joins us now. Sergio, welcome back.
Sergio Olmos: Hey Dave.
Miller: Can you remind us what the stated purpose of the rally was?
Olmos: Yeah, it was a justice for the January 6th “political prisoners.” It was put on by this organiser, Matt Braynard, who was a kind of low level Trump campaign staffer in 2016. He was like a data strategist. He wasn’t he wasn’t prominent in the administration, was kind of kicked off pretty early in that campaign. And they wanted to tell the public that what happened during the insurrection was kind of this political prisoner situation. That protests like the BLM protests we saw, those weren’t prosecuted, but this was prosecuted, and it’s unfair and politicized, and that they condemn violence, but most of these people weren’t violent. So they were definitely rewriting history, talking about an illegitimate election, and so on and so forth.
Miller: Can you give us a sense for what you saw in DC on Saturday?
Olmos: Yeah, it was a beautiful day. The capital itself was closed off by a small fence, you couldn’t get near it. But in Union Square where they set up, there was a little podium, and there was Joe Kent, who’s running in Washington’s 3rd congressional district. He’s running to unseat Jaime Herrera Beutler. He’s saying that she voted for impeachment and that that’s not right. He’s running to her right to unseat her. And he spoke at this event along with Mike Collins, who’s running Georgia’s in 10th district. Both these guys are running to the incumbents’ right. They’re supporting the January 6th ordeal. And what we saw was them with about 50 people listening, and about 250 reporters around them.
Miller: So that’s the ratio between journalists and protesters that I mentioned that you tweeted about. What was the police presence like?
Olmos: Lots of police there. DC Police, the Capitol Police, and the Metropolitan Police. Many of them were just wearing regular uniforms on bicycles. Not an aggressive posture. Then we did see the riot police come out once a man was detained for allegedly having a weapon. Another man, same thing. And riot police did come out, do a little show of force around those arrests. But it was very not aggressive, not overly militarized. Police were wearing their regular uniforms. And honestly, after about an hour, most cops were just standing in the shade without riot gear without gas masks, just standing there drinking water, and it was a very relaxed kind of thing.
Miller: Overall though, how different was the security or police presence and posture compared to what we all saw on January 6th?
Olmos: I wasn’t there on January 6th, I was there for the inauguration. And, it was significantly different. So during the inauguration, DC Looked like a green zone. I mean the fences were out, way out, and there was a lot of National Guard. Police were in full gear and lots of police lights everywhere. DC itself shut down basically, you couldn’t get a drink, you couldn’t go to a restaurant, most of them were shut down, boarded up. It was just reporters and National Guard walking around. What we saw on Saturday was not that. On Saturday, most of DC was kind of ignoring what happened in Union Square. There were bars just a few blocks away, people watching college football. There was a festival that people flew in for. Most of DC was happening, and this did not shut down the rest of the city.
Miller: What happened as it got later into the evening? After previous Proud Boy and far right events, things turned more violent as it got darker. That wasn’t the case on Saturday, it seems. What did happen?
Olmos: Yeah. Last time around, the Proud Boys would go to a couple bars. There’s one very famous one in DC, I won’t name it. But there was a heavy police presence at that bar, and there weren’t many far right figures there. It was very sparsely attended, just like the rally. And I think that’s why we weren’t seeing any kind of nighttime brawls. The rally itself had like 50 people, and there were some far right figures. Some of them had been known to brawl, but nobody was wearing Proud Boy uniforms, none of the big names were there, and their Telegram channels said don’t go. They were warning people against this, that this is a kind of “fed trap.” And so there just wasn’t enough people to go out to bars and pick fights. I mean, we’re talking less than 50 people in total, and many of them were just not brawlers, just regular folk who supported the insurrection.
Miller: How much of a presence among that tiny group of people did you see from Oregon or Washington?
Olmos: I saw a couple, Dave. I saw a couple who I’d seen at the Proud Boy event in Parkrose, I saw a couple I had seen at many many rallies, some streamers we’ve seen many rallies here. But again, with 50 people, I mean Salem had a much bigger rally on Saturday than DC. There just wasn’t many people.
And by the way, when I say regular folk who supported insurrection, let’s make that clear. Supporting the interaction is a kind of way out-there idea. But I think what I’m saying is this was not very aggressive. Nobody’s wearing baseball bats and guns. This was like people who are supporting the insurrection had like T shirts and were saying, this is all a conspiracy. They weren’t bringing helmets and baseball bats.
Miller: I want to go back to something you said earlier that, in various online communications leading up to this past Saturday, you saw far right groups saying “don’t go, this is some kind of federal trap.” What were people saying, and what exactly did they mean?
Olmos: Yeah, there’s a term called a honey pot. Like the idea that federal agents are actually setting things up to get them,as a kind of sting operation. These far right groups amongst their Telegrams, their ways of communicating with each other, and chats, they thought that this was a way for the FBI to get a lot of Proud Boys there, a lot of far right figures there, so they could ID them, get them in groups, build cases against them from what happened on January 6th. And so many of them were saying “don’t go.” Of course, as you know Dave, there’s been over 30 prosecutions from what happened January 6th, and many far right figures are being arrested for what happened there. But the organizer behind this, Matt Braynard, he’s had other rallies. This is what he does. And one of the speakers, Joe Kent, he’s running for Congress. This was not a police operation.
Miller: So if this fizzled for some of the reasons you just mentioned, what have you been hearing and seeing from far right groups about what might come next?
Olmos: While many far right groups that brawl in the streets did not attend this, they are attending things. Some of them were in Salem, Oregon this weekend. A lot of them have found that a very popular idea to rally behind is kind of anti-COVID, anti-vax stuff. And a lot of them have found that if they provide security for those groups, they’re much more in the mainstream. There isn’t a lot of appetite, as we saw with Saturday in DC, for straight up supporting the insurrection. A lot of people seem very queasy about that idea. No sitting member of Congress attended. It doesn’t have a huge amount of support as you would think. So these far right groups are kind of attaching themselves to anti-COVID, anti-vax demonstrations.
At the same time, Dave, let’s be clear. Not all far right groups are brawlers. Some of them wear suits. And certainly the people that spoke at this event, like Joe Kent who’s running, said that the election was illegitimate, that Biden is not a legitimate president, there needs to be investigation, that the people who were arrested on January 6th are political prisoners. These are clearly far right talking points. Just because they’re not brawling does not mean this was not a kind of far right gathering.
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