Republican senator Rand Paul has called for American truckers to bring their own version of the ‘freedom convoy’ blockade to the Super Bowl and DC.
Asked about the potential for a US convoy of truckers to target LA and DC during an interview with The Daily Signal, the Republican said he was “all for it”.
“I’m all for it. Civil disobedience, civil disobedience is a time-honored tradition in our country from slavery to civil rights to you name it. Peaceful protest, clog things up, make people think about the mandates,” Mr Paul said.
“And some of this, we started. We put mandates on truckers coming across the border from Canada so then they put mandates on, and the truckers are annoyed. They’re riding in a cab by themselves, most of them for eight, 10-hour long hauls, and they just want to do what they want to do. It’s their own business,” he added.
His comments come as the White House said the Department of Homeland Security was taking “all necessary steps to ensure that the convoy does not disrupt lawful trade and transportation or interfere with federal government and law enforcement operations”.
Ahead of Sunday’s Super Bowl, Ms Psaki said: “On reports that this convoy is causing disruptions at the Super Bowl, the Department of Homeland Security ... is surging additional staff to its incident command post. There’s strong cooperation with the California Highway Patrol, the Los Angeles Police Department, and state and local authorities.”
On Saturday, police moved in to disperse truckers blocking the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor, one of the main trade routes between the US and Canada.
Faced with the threat of the protests hitting the US, Mr Paul added: “I hope the truckers do come to America,” he said, asked how he thinks Washington would handle such a convoy.
“It’d be great, but the thing is, it wouldn’t shut the city down because the government workers haven’t come to work in two years anyway. I don’t know if it’ll affect DC. It’d be a nice change. We’d actually have some traffic.”
