Utah Capitol building– The Proud Boys, local militia groups, retired veterans and angry citizens were all on hand to protest the final confirmation of Joe Biden’s electoral victory.
Utah Stories’ objective was to understand if indeed Trump supporters were disavowing themselves from the Republican Party. We spoke to about a dozen protestors who feel that the election was fraudulent. Many did believe that the Republican Party is now turning its support away from Trump, and many of them were turning their support away from the Republican Party.
At one point protestors were chanting, “Recall Mitt! Recall Mitt” in references to Utah Senator Mitt Romney who has not supported Trump at all in his attempts to challenge the election results.
While this protest was happening, the chambers of the Senate and House were being criminally vandalized by Trump supporters in Washington D.C. Nobody on hand that we spoke to was calling for insurrection or the instigation of violence.
As the news of the storming of the Senate Chamber was happening, the big TV displaying what was happening was turned off. There was no cheering or support for what was happening in D.C. even among the Proud Boys. We also did not find anybody at this protest who believed that Trump or his supporters would somehow turnover the election results using force or violence.
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Still, nearly everyone we spoke with did believe that there is a possibility of a Civil War in America if we cannot hold free and fair elections. Some were calling for preparedness to fight and were urging the crowd to stand up and fight. “Give me liberty or give me death,” one speaker proclaimed. Anger for losing our liberties was contrasted with one woman who owns a restaurant in Ogden that sells baked potatoes. She came with a partner dressed as a “Trump Tater”. She was calling for peace and kindness. “You get plenty of hate on the left, we cannot stoop to their level. We need to be taters, not haters.”
Utah Stories conducted about twenty interviews, and recorded about 20 speeches, these are the dozen we selected for this video. If you were interviewed or you would like to see the rest of the interviews, we will take the time to prepare a longer video. Leave your comments below and please share this content if you appreciate our work.
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