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Jerry Babb and Robert Beckner stood on a brick pedestal and watched a crowd of tens of thousands gathered at Freedom Plaza for the Million Magician March.
“America is beautiful,” Babb said, a sea of Trump flags in front of him. “And the United States is back.”
The crowd sang the national anthem and sporadically erupted in cheers for the president. The rally began at Freedom Plaza on Saturday morning and would culminate in crowds of hundreds and thousands by late afternoon.
Large numbers of protesters had traveled across the country to show their support for Donald Trump, from as far away as Los Angeles and Seattle. One group, holding the banner “Korean Americans Support President Trump in 2020,” said they came from South Korea for the election and had come forward to support their man again on Saturday.
Craig Johnson, who had driven 14 hours from Florida, was handing out dollar bills with a photo of Melania Trump.
“She is not beautiful?” he told the protesters passing by. “That’s my first lady.”
“I want this nightmare to end,” he told The Guardian. “I haven’t slept much since the election because it saddens me that Donald Trump is not our president. However, he will be our president. “
Johnson was not the only one with such a strong belief in Trump’s claims, made without evidence, that the election was rigged, and in his refusal to back down to Joe Biden after all the major media organizations called for the race for him. Democrat, by 306-232. at the electoral college.
Babb, 60, said Trump was the best president he ever had, one who “did everything he said he would do.”
Beckner added that he has started a recount petition and already had 18,000 signatures. He was confident that a recount would occur and that Trump would come out “absolutely” as the winner.
Many supporters were driven by a combination of mistrust of state vote counts and the media, and the conviction that Trump had, in fact, won the presidency, was simply not reported. Stevan Roknic, who had come from Hobart, Indiana, said it was “mysterious” how Trump was reported to have lost the election.
“Trump was winning, he had the election overwhelming,” Roknic said. And then in the middle of the night they stopped counting and mysteriously all these votes turned up for Joe Biden. I do not buy it “.
Roknic, among others, said he believed the coronavirus pandemic was “orchestrated” and had a role in electing the Democrats.
There was a strong presence of minority groups, mainly Asian Americans. But Alexandira Juárez, from Buxton, Maine, wore a “Latinas for Trump” T-shirt and said, “I absolutely love Trump and what he’s done for this country, and they stole him for four more years.”
When asked about the issue of the separation of children, one of Trump’s most controversial policies and one that predominantly affected Latin American migrants at the southern border, Juárez said he did not believe they were really separated.
Tony Capo, an Egyptian-American pharmacy student from New York, said he was attending the rally only to support an election audit. He went from being a Democrat in 2016 to supporting Trump this time.
“We just want an audit for the vote, I’m not trying to say that there is necessarily electoral fraud,” he said. “But the fact that some senior officials deny an audit is ridiculous.”
A Muslim, he said that Trump had condemned white supremacists and racism, and that Trump’s Muslim ban was not a ban against Muslims, but concerned countries with large Muslim populations. As he spoke, the crowd behind him erupted into “Four more years!” sing. Capo encouraged them.
Dennis and Mikami Lam, an American couple from Hong Kong, had come from Los Angeles. They were celebrating outside the supreme court because of Trump’s policy towards China, which they said was beneficial to Hong Kong.
In the late afternoon, Trump supporters crowded in front of the Supreme Court, where they were greeted by a crowd of counter-protesters. The two groups were separated by a barricade and law enforcement officers, but still briefly clashed after rumors spread that members of the extremist group Proud Boys were present. Some supporters were seen cheering on Proud Boys and wearing Proud Boys caps. The Guardian was unable to independently verify whether the people wearing Proud Boys clothing were actually from the group.
The crowd consisted of people from various backgrounds and communities. Some shouted obscenities at the counter-protesters. But some were all smiles, in the capital just to celebrate.
