As The Grateful Dead famously said, “sometimes the light's all shinin' on me.” And then at “other times, I can barely see.” Writing about the trucker convoy protest extravaganza the past couple of weeks, “it occurs to me what a long, strange trip it's been.” The Daily Beast’s Zachary Petrizzo has been covering this strange trip up close, and he reported Thursday evening that Maryland State Police were called in to arrest an armed man at the “People’s Convoy” rally point in Hagerstown, Maryland.
According to the report, the arrest came after infighting led to a confrontation that escalated at the rally. The discontent had been brewing for a few days after bad weather and a lack of direction and purpose coupled with a smaller insurgent group reportedly trying to take control over the protests led to general frustrations, desertions, and dissatisfaction.
Earlier in the week at the Hagerstown Speedway, where the truckers meet before wasting time, money, and diesel riding around in circles outside of Washington, D.C., a man calling himself Ricky Bobby took the microphone. He rambled on for a bit, as is par for the course at such an event, and then tried to get truckers to go to another rally point where he promised “indoor bathrooms.”
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People’s Convoy organizers took to the stage after him to try and explain to the crowd that he and his group did not represent what they were doing. It was hard to parse whether this Ricky Bobby—the name of Will Ferrell’s character in the comedy film Talledega Nights—was a bad actor in that he was making a joke of the People’s Convoy, or if he was a bad actor in that he was trying to steal control of the loosely organized trucker convoy movement. His beef with the convoy leadership seems to have been boiled down to who exactly convoy organizers consider “we the people.” This “we the people” statement, amplified by the PA system being used at the rally site, seems to be the only identifier of his convoy splinter group.
The timing of the intrusion and conflict came as one of the convoy’s organizers, Brian Brase, had gone home for a few days. Brase has since returned and tried to reinvigorate the dwindling D.C. presence by telling folks that their protest against mostly nonexistent vaccine mandates isn’t a “waste.”
Maryland State Police Corporal Ciccarelli told The Daily Beast that a gun possession arrest would be followed up by an investigation. An unnamed trucker told The Daily Beast that "I know they're part of a group trying to go around to the campfires at night, trying to sire up the mutiny.”
All of this strife comes as convoy organizers scramble to find new accommodations for the truckers. The Herald-Mail reports that the truckers must be gone from the Hagerstown Speedway tomorrow so that the first race of the season can take place. While they can return after the day’s festivities, they will need to be completely out of the site by April 7. The movement’s two organizers, Brian Brase and Mike Landis, told the Mail that the movement is still solid at its core.
Brase and Landis said one man quit his job and cashed in his 401(k) to stay with the convoy. Others, such as owner-operator truckers, are tapping into their savings to meet personal expenses such as truck and mortgage payments while they're with the convoy and not working.
Giving away your worldly possession to join a group with a vague worldview and demands seems like a recipe for sadness. Just ask a Canadian convoy supporter who is living out of his car after giving Ottawa truckers his life savings.
As of Friday morning, more people have left the convoy to go home.
You can watch some of “Ricky Bobby’s” strange speech below.