Seven-foot fencing topped with razor wire will likely be installed surrounding the US Capitol next week, in advance of President Joe Biden’s March 1 State of the Union message. Capitol Police are reportedly planning the wall to keep out truckers who are heading to DC as part of the People’s Convoy protesting COVID restrictions.
Instead of shutting the truckers out, Biden should be inviting them in to sit in the gallery during his speech and have a chat afterward. He invited America’s enemy Russian President Vladimir Putin to talk. Why not truckers who love America and say they want to “restore our nation’s Constitution”?
How Biden treats the truckers could be pivotal for his presidency and the Democratic Party. The people who truck our goods, serve us in restaurants and work with their hands are speaking out for American freedom.
If Scranton Joe were still at the top of his game, he’d welcome the truckers and regale them with stories of his blue-collar past. Visiting a Mack Truck plant last summer, Biden boasted, “I used to drive an 18-wheeler rig.” That isn’t true, though he once rode in a rig. The point is Biden understood, even a year ago, the political payoff from treating working people with respect, instead of greeting them with razor wire.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said he hopes the truckers do come: “Civil disobedience is a time-honored tradition in our country, from slavery to civil-rights, you name it. Peacefully protest, clog things up, make people think about the mandates.”
When thousands marched on Washington to protest George Floyd’s death, they weren’t met with razor wire. This is America.
Up north, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made a whopper of a political miscalculation by crushing the truckers’ protest without ever giving them a hearing. But Trudeau is a born-and-bred elite. Biden claims working-class credentials.
Meanwhile, in unison the mainstream media are dismissing the American truckers as “right-wing,” among other things.
Anti-science? Hardly. Science is proving the truckers right about the damaging impact of government lockdowns and mandates.
A Johns Hopkins analysis found “no evidence that lockdowns, school closures, border closures and limiting gatherings have had a noticeable effect on COVID-19 mortality,” with the possible exception of locking down bars.
Lockdowns cost lives instead of saving them: “Deaths of despair” are likely linked to unemployment, economic desperation and social isolation, suggests University of Chicago professor Casey Mulligan.
The height of the pandemic saw more than 30 million Americans — mostly wage workers — laid off or furloughed in a speculative attempt to curb the spread of the virus. Unemployment hit 14.7%.
Of course, government bureaucrats, journalists and professors didn’t lose their jobs. Now the media are barely mentioning new findings that lockdowns didn’t actually save lives.
Nor are they speaking up, questioning the continuation of government emergency powers.
When Biden notified Congress Friday that he is extending his emergency powers, which were scheduled to expire, the media were mum. Likewise when Gov. Kathy Hochul extended her emergency powers last week.
It’s the truckers who are saying “Enough.”
New York Times columnist Thomas B. Edsall dismisses the truckers and their allies as ignoramuses who lack the “advanced education and top scores on aptitude tests” to get ahead. When the truck convoy arrives in DC, Edsall argues, Biden must prove himself by maintaining order. That would be a rerun of Trudeau’s mistake.
Truth is, these truckers speak for a large swath of America that is fed up with government closing businesses, mandating shots and forcing masks on their kids.
Biden routinely calls his agenda a “blue-collar blueprint to build America.” If he wants the country to believe he’s a friend of working people, he’ll listen to the truckers, not smack them down.
Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York.
Twitter: @Betsy_McCaughey
