Defeat the Mandates; US Truckers' Convoy

A movement that began in DC on Jan 23 will continue with an event in Southern California on March 5, launching the US trucker's convoy on March 6.

I had the honor of speaking on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Jan 23 to a crowd of 40,000 gathered for Defeat the Mandates: An American Homecoming. You can watch the entire event here, including my speech at 1:31:40. It was an honor to look down to the right of the podium and see, inscribed on the marble slab, the spot where Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech fifty years ago.

You can also find my speech kindly posted in two handy clips here by somebody on Twitter (complete with Chinese subtitles!):

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Dr. Aaron Kheriaty: The pandemic was used as a pretext for expanding state powers. Keep in mind that this pretext of public health and public safety historically has been used to pave the way even for totalitarian regimes.

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Allison Schuster at The Federalist wrote a nice summary of the event in this piece, as did my friend Jeffery Tucker over at The Brownstone Institute in an piece titled, “The DC Rally and the Rise of the Resistance.” An independent journalist produced this terrific 20 minute video summarizing the media’s failed attempt to frighten people away from attending, by claiming that “bad elements” would show up and turn the rally into another January 6th riot. These dire predictions were pure propaganda from those who do not want the movement to gain traction. Contrary to these scare tactics, Defeat the Mandates DC ended up being an entirely peaceful, joyful, bipartisan demonstration of solidarity. One wag on Twitter said it was 40% Trump supporters and 60% hippies in drum circles; my read was more 20% of each of these and 60% just ordinary, normal Americans of no particular political ideological stripe:

Following the event, in his monologue (and with a sneer), Jimmy Kimmel dubbed our DC gathering “Covid-Chella”—a reference to Coachella, California which hosts a huge music festival. Well, whatever Jimmy thinks of our movement, we liked the name and it just so happened to align with my suggestion to have our next event in California. We indeed settled on Coachella Valley. The “Burning Man” outdoor festival atmosphere provides a ready-made hashtag, “Burning Mandates.”

So I’m pleased to announce an all-day outdoor event with the US truckers on March 5 in Coachella Valley, CA (exact venue to be announced in a day or two), co-sponsored by Defeat the Mandates and The People’s Convoy. In addition to the doctors/scientists (I’ll be speaking along with several of the other usual suspects) and of course the long-haul truckers, we’ll have lots of artists, athletes, and celebrities joining us on the stage.

The following day, March 6, the truckers will launch their enormous convoy to Washington, DC, bringing our movement from DC to CA and back again—with a stop in Indianapolis along the convoy’s journey east. It’s gonna be epic. I hope you can join us in SoCal that weekend.

My friend Clayton Fox will be among the journalists who will cover the convoy. Clay recently published a terrific piece in The Tablet titled, “The Dissidents,” which profiled several of us who have challenged the CNN/MSNBC pandemic narrative. In the same vein, someone recently posted on Twitter this graphic—with great headshots of some of my friends. Quiz question: can you name them all?

I’ll be heading to Florida Monday for a long-form interview with Tucker Carlson, where I’ll discuss more details about the Defeat the Mandates CA event and truckers convoy. I’ll send that interview—along with some recent podcast interviews I did with Megyn Kelly, Laura Ingraham, and Kristi Leigh—in my next post.