Trump supporters try to ‘rescue’ S.F.
Hundreds cross bridge, call on Democrats to leave party
Hundreds of President Trump’s supporters marched across the Golden Gate Bridge on Sunday in what appeared to be a largely peaceful demonstration.
“America is in great peril. We are in great distress,” conservative activist Brandon Straka told the crowd gathered Sunday morning for the “Rescue America” rally and flotilla.
“America is a damsel in distress tied to the railroad tracks as a freight train from the radical left is charging at her and waiting to obliterate her,” he added. “She is waiting for a hero to untie her and set her free, and that is what every one of you are today. You’re the heroes that America needs.”
Just after 9 a.m., dozens of California Highway Patrol officers outnumbered protesters huddling near the Golden Gate Bridge welcome center, but the crowd soon swelled.
With nearly as many wearing red “MAGA” hats as face coverings, about 100 people marched from the welcome center to the flagpole on the south side of the bridge at 9:30 a.m. With American flags waving, and some draped over shoulders to form capes, the group doubled in size by 10 a.m. as the demonstration started.
After playing the national anthem and bowing in prayer, organizers spoke to the crowd over a publicaddress system between chants of “Four more years,” “USA” and “Walk Away.”
John Dennis, chairman of the
San Francisco Republican Party, said Democrats “are for lying. … We’re for the great American experiment of liberty, and the Republican Party is fighting for that every day.”
The group then set out to complete the 1.7mile march across the bridge. After verbal barbs with about a dozen counterprotesters,
the group made the trek in pairs with a police escort.
Kevin McGary joined the protest. He said he walked away from the Democratic Party during Ronald Reagan’s second term.
“It was sort of like the veil was lifted, and I realized that the party that I was traditionally a part of did not represent my values or support policies that help the Black community come up,” said McGary, who chairs the Frederick Douglass Foundation, a political consulting firm in Union City.
Carrying signs in support of Trump and bopping to country and patriotic music, the group marched across the bridge as honks and yells emerged from slowed cars. Midway through the march, a couple of counterprotesters verbally threatened the crowd, but the encounter did not escalate.
As the group neared the north side of the bridge, it expected to be met by a flotilla that had started two hours earlier at Ayala Cove on Angel Island.
The boat parades received swarms of attention in August, first by possibly setting a world record with more than 1,500 vessels in Florida, and then when boaters swept up in the fervor of a Portland, Ore., demonstration were saved from drowning.
Only about a dozen boats were visible in San Francisco on the overcast and chilly Sunday morning.
“We don’t care if you walk, run or boat away — as long as you quickly move away from the radical left,” said Straka, who also took a verbal swipe at the Black Lives Matter movement, saying he was harassed by “mobsters and thugs” from the movement Thursday night after leaving a Republican National Convention event at the White House.
Black Lives Matter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Straka started the #WalkAway Campaign, which encourages people to leave the Democratic Party, ahead of the 2018 midterm elections. This was the seventh such rally in the nation this year.