The trucker convoy detours into conspiracy – and irrelevancy

WASHINGTON — They’re on a road to nowhere.

Two weeks ago, an American trucker convoy set off from California with hopes of duplicating the international fame Canadian truckers gained protesting covid-19 restrictions north of the border. Instead, the copycat convoy wound up detouring into irrelevancy.

As the truckers crossed the country, the reason for the protest largely evaporated: Mask and vaccine mandates tumbled — not because of the convoy but because the pandemic receded. And Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has dominated news coverage, leaving the truckers largely forgotten and sharply increasing the cost of fuel for their now-pointless mission.

Now, they’re in the Washington area, camping out in Hagerstown, Md., and they’ve decided the best way to get themselves noticed would be to . . . make traffic on the Beltway?

Threatening to increase traffic on the Beltway is like threatening to add water to the Potomac River: How would anyone notice the difference? The 64-mile loop around the capital is in a state of perpetual slowdown.

The convoy organizers were further hoping that their circling of the already-choked thoroughfare would force members of Congress to “come to the table” and negotiate — an unlikely prospect given that lawmakers haven’t been in town and would have little reason to travel on the Beltway even if here.

Of course, the convoy drivers could try to clog up downtown Washington the way their counterparts did in Ottawa. They’d be as welcome here as the Russian army is in Kyiv.

So why continue this long, strange trip? Maybe Q told them to.

As Monday dawned at the Hagerstown Speedway, QAnon follower Micki Larson-Olson addressed the convoy drivers from the organizers’ stage, according to videos shared on social media. Wearing a head-to-toe U.S. flag suit, she identified herself as a “Q Patriot” and suggested she was facing trial for her role in the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection.

“I am now a proud General Flynn digital soldier,” she said, referring to Michael Flynn, President Donald Trump’s convicted (and pardoned) national security adviser. “I am also a proud Protzmanian.” For the uninitiated, that’s a QAnon sect that believes the late John F. Kennedy Jr. will return to reinstall Trump as president.

Larson-Olson said more, but the sound system cut out as she outlined a conspiracy theory about 9/11.

Reports from the convoy suggest it is less a protest against fading covid mandates than a rolling carnival for the Trump right, with talk of ivermectin, antifa, President Biden as a pedophile, evil Anthony Fauci — and, of course, the “stolen” 2020 election.

Convoy organizer Brian Brase, speaking from the same stage in Hagerstown as the “Q Patriot,” drew a cheer for announcing that Republican Sens. Ron Johnson (Wis.) and Ted Cruz (Tex.) would be meeting with them. Brase rallied those who would make the 200-mile round trip voyage of irrelevancy: “We’re taking two lanes up to let the world know that we’re here and we mean business.”

Two lanes may sound like a lot — unless you know the Beltway has six in each direction at points. A few hundred vehicles clogging the interstate may sound like a lot — unless you know a quarter of a million vehicles a day pass any given point on the Beltway.

The convoy drivers set off for their counterclockwise circling of the Beltway — and I set off for a clockwise circling of the Beltway to meet them.

Those participating in the convoy numbered in the three digits. Those cheering on the convoy from overpasses numbered in the low two digits. I saw a handful of spectators at only four overpasses in all of Virginia (a fifth group turned out to be a crew from the Virginia Department of Transportation filming the convoy). On the Idylwood Road overpass near Tysons, seven convoy boosters hung Second Amendment flags, a Don’t Tread on Me flag, and a “Trump Won” banner.

They waited — and waited. So did I. Where was the convoy? Then I realized: I was looking at it. The WTOP radio traffic report informed me that it was passing through my area at that moment. The traffic, heavy but moving smoothly, wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. I felt cheated.

Maybe some of those in the convoy feel that way, too. No doubt some of them started out with genuine concerns about government overreach on covid. But the convoy took a wrong turn, and wound up traveling in the cul-de-sac of Trumpy conspiracy theories and hucksterism. The Post reports that the organization handling donations to the convoy, the American Foundation for Civil Liberties and Freedom, is run by a woman wanted for violating parole “after pleading guilty to felony fraud and exploitation charges in 2020.”

Fraud and exploitation: the final destination of the trucker convoy? Not if JFK Jr. can help it.