Liberals are having a conniption over protests against lockdown orders because they have the potential to spread coronavirus.
All right then, Wayne Allyn Root says. He set out to organize a protest where everyone stayed in their car — and he said it would be the “biggest caravan in Vegas strip history.”
Root, a Las Vegas-based conservative radio host, was the grand marshal of the event — “Open Nevada, Unleash Prosperity, Save America,” according to the U.K. Daily Mail — which took place on Friday.
Root previously said his “WAR Army” — his nickname for his listeners — would “dominate the Vegas Strip for miles” to demand Nevada Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak reopen the state’s economy.
Sisolak is already under some pressure after Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman, an independent, demanded that Sisolak reopen the state for business.
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“This shutdown has become one of total insanity, in my opinion,” Goodman said last week, according to Newsweek, “for there is no backup of data as to why we are shutdown from the start, no plan in place how to move through the shutdown or how even to come out of it.”
“For heaven’s sake,” she added, “being closed is killing us already and killing Las Vegas, our industry, our convention and tourism business that we have all worked so hard to build. The longer we wait to do this, the more impossible it will become to recover.”
Root planned to put more pressure on the government — and in a manner by which no one could accuse him of spreading the novel coronavirus.
“Las Vegas police is sending a huge contingent of police — they expect this will be record-breaker,” Root, who came up with the idea on his radio show last week, told The Western Journal in a statement before the event.
Is it time for America to reopen?
“The beauty of this protest?” he continued. “I designed it all to be safe and healthy. We will not violate any government guidelines about social distancing.”
Photos from the Daily Mail, however, showed many protesters outside of their vehicles mingling with each other and not following social-distancing regulations.
The event was covered live on his three-hour radio show — and it wasn’t just about creating a good broadcast.
“All my speeches and the other speakers and celebrity guests are calling in on the radio (from their cars),” Root said of his plans for the event.
“I will host my national radio show live from my car at head of this massive ‘Patriots Procession,’” Root said. “All participants will tune into my radio show for entire three-hour event and hear the speeches and interviews there.
“And it’s interactive. Participants in their cars will call in to my show and describe their experience live.”
Root told The Western Journal this was going to be the “biggest caravan in Vegas Strip history.”
Later, he posted on Twitter that his prediction was accurate.
“Just as I predicted/ biggest protest caravan in Vegas Strip history and B) everyone well mannered and C) my message was reasoned, not radical,” he tweeted.
I’ll bet media was shocked & angered by a) massive size of crowd. Just as I predicted/ biggest protest caravan in Vegas Strip history and B) everyone well mannered and C) my message was reasoned, not radical. They had to hate that. https://t.co/qM8ICKvqrK
— Wayne Allyn Root (@RealWayneRoot) April 25, 2020
KSNV reported there were hundreds of cars at the protest.
Protesters are starting to arrive near the Grant Sawyer building. Metro police are blocking the entrances to the building. pic.twitter.com/afaRCoz1LF
— Kyla Galer (@kylagaler) April 24, 2020
As KVVU-TV noted, there were also a Trump 2020 bus and a Trump-themed Lamborghini in attendance among the standard-issue cars that made up the motorcade.
As for the purpose, it’s not hard to tell: Nevada is hemorrhaging jobs, particularly given how tourism-centric the state’s economy is.
“This is all about the forgotten ‘Silent Majority.’ Who cares about them? This idea perpetrated by media that liberals care about people, but conservative groups protesting the lockdown and demanding the reopening of economy do not care about the people, is pure lies, misinformation and propaganda,” Root said.
“The fact is, conservatives, capitalists and patriots like my ‘WAR Army’ care very much about seniors, the sick, the immune suppressed, and those most at risk. I have said from day one, we need to protect those at risk. We need to quarantine those at risk. But we don’t need to close down the economy to destroy the lives and livelihoods of everyone else.”
Instead, Root told The Western Journal that the lockdown orders are “wrecking the greatest economy in world history and starting a devastating Great Depression.”
Root said that this wasn’t about heartlessly putting profits over potential coronavirus deaths. Claiming so is a false dichotomy, he said.
“I care about the people more than any liberal governor shutting down the economy. Because they are making their own citizens jobless, penniless and even homeless in the future,” Root said. “So how can we pay sales tax, property tax or income tax moving forward?
“So, without that revenue, who is paying for government to take care of the seniors, the pensions, the medical bills, the food stamps? Liberals are creating a humanitarian disaster, as well a terrible constitutional crisis and a clear violation of our civil rights,” he continued, saying it was time to get the economy restarted.
“We are a nation of risk-takers,” Root said. “We didn’t hide from the Nazis. We didn’t hide from terrorists. We never hid from communists. We never hid from polio. It’s time to live life again and (for those willing to take the risk) restart the economy, but just like my Vegas Strip caravan — only by following guidelines and protocols.”
Root’s protest came after a tumultuous few weeks in which many states previously thought to have been paragons of dealing with coronavirus were trying to handle significant protests.
Michigan, whose Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, was being tipped as a trendy vice presidential pick for Joe Biden, is now dealing with widespread civil disobedience over a more stringent stay-at-home order and the fact that she and the and officials around her dealt with outrage over some of of the new regulations with what amounted to a shrug emoji.
Meanwhile, other states — Minnesota, New Jersey, New York and Virginia, among others — have also dealt with similar protests.
The protests have complicated issues in states which either have a low infection rate or infections that are centralized in one area.
Michigan, for instance, has some of the highest coronavirus numbers in the country — but they’re almost all localized in the Detroit metro area, whereas many of the rural communities in the state are locked down despite having very few COVID-19 cases. In rural northern Michigan, sheriffs from four counties have pledged not to enforce Whitmer’s new regulations.
In Nevada, you can bet Root’s protest made Gov. Sisolak pay attention.
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