Trump supporters gather in downtown Raleigh to protest COVID-19 restrictions

Over 100 Trump supporters gathered in downtown Raleigh Saturday to protest restrictions due to COVID-19, a disease that has infected over 900,000 and killed over 11,800 in North Carolina as of Saturday.

Among the supporters were some dressed in Proud Boys clothing, a far-right white nationalist organization.

Others waved a flag emblazoned with the logo for Qanon, a far-right conspiracy theory that falsely claims, among other things, that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from former President Donald Trump.

An admin for the Facebook group “Impeach Roy Cooper,” who said her name is Kimmie Kim, helped organize the event, which took place across the street from the governor’s mansion on Blount Street.

The sidewalk by the entrance to the governor’s mansion was barricaded with Capitol Police vehicles parked outside.

At one point, speaking to the crowd, Kim referred to the former president as “our president Donald J. Trump.”

Trump and many of his supporters have falsely claimed for months that the election was stolen due to fraudulent mail-in ballot votes.

There is no evidence to support this claim.

Among the speakers at the event was Kim Coley, who ran as a Republican for N.C. House District 36 in 2020. She lost by 10 percentage points to Democrat Julie von Haefen.

“I didn’t lose on Election Day,” Coley said Saturday. “I lost with the mail-in ballots.”

Coley, who attended the Jan. 6 Stop the Steal Rally in Washington, D.C., that resulted in the storming of the federal Capitol, has suggested in Facebook posts, without evidence, that mail-in ballots are fraudulent.

Mail-in ballots increased in the 2020 election due to many taking precautions due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Many who spoke to the crowd, a vast majority of whom were not wearing masks, demanded that Gov. Roy Cooper end the mask mandate.

The state Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have said masks are essential to slowing the spread of COVID-19, a disease that has killed over half a million Americans.

A protester who said her name is Mindy Mindy told the crowd that masks have been used to control the population.

“You need to take your masks off,” Mindy Mindy said. “Masks are a bridge to the vaccine.”

Mindy Mindy falsely claimed that the COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna are a weapon used to alter human DNA.

“This injection is not a cure. It is a bioweapon,” she said.

The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have been shown in clinical tests to be over 90% effective against COVID-19.

Mindy Mindy also said that Cooper and Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases operated “hand-in-hand with the Chinese.”

Trump has often suggested without evidence that the government of China created COVID-19 in a lab. Many believe Trump’s words have fueled the increase in violence against Asian Americans over the last year.

Just over a dozen counter-protesters gathered across Blount Street with police standing lined up between each group.

The protesters shouted at each other, but there were no physical altercations.

This story was originally published March 20, 2021 at 4:58 PM.