The leader of a group of truckers clogging up traffic in Washington, D.C., in opposition to vaccine mandates said he would have stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 had he not been working that day.
Brian Brase, the organizer of “The People’s Convoy,” delivered a long, rambling sermon in front of a campfire Saturday night where he covered a wide range of topics in a livestream hosted by a woman who continually pushed for the long-hauler to be elected president.
“I would have been inside that Capitol building (but) I was shifting gears,” he told a small crowd camping out at in a suburban Maryland racetrack. “You bet your a– I would have went in!”
One person in the crowd of what appeared to be a dozen or so truckers and supporters said he was in Washington, D.C., the day Donald Trump fanatics assaulted police officers protecting elected officials who were certifying the 2020 election.
In a video posted to YouTube, Brase ranted about freedom, told his supporters they were “freedom fighters” and spoke about the Boston Tea Party. He then declared that if anyone tried dragging him out of his truck and forcing a vaccination on him, they’d better be ready for a fight.
“You will have to kill me before I allow you to stick a needle in my arm,” he said on video of the gathering posted to YouTube. “I will not die on my knees — you will have to kill me!”
Seemingly inspired by his crowd’s growing excitement, Brase turned up the temperature.
“And if you somehow, some way manage to get that needle in my arm and push on that vaccine, I will kill you. That’s a fact,” he said. “You will never mandate me.”
The “People’s Convoy” has been widely ridiculed as disorganized and unclear in its plans by news outlets since rolling into the Washington, D.C., area earlier this month. One of its low points came last Sunday when a man on a bicycle pulled into a D.C. street and slowed down the parade of truckers while they were trying to clog up traffic. Video shows one confused driver pulling up to the bicyclist who was tuning out the honking horns all around him.
“I’m sorry, I can’t hear you,” the man tells the trucker. “It’s too loud.”
