Trump convoy drives from Fort Worth to Oklahoma to protest, demand voting transparency
When Carlos Caridad originally planned a “Trump Train” for Nov. 8, the event was meant to be a victory parade to celebrate President Donald Trump’s re-election. Instead, dozens of cars and trucks with Trump 2020 flags drove through North Texas to protest the results of the 2020 election on Sunday.
Around 40 vehicles decked out in Trump flags, banners and stickers gathered at Cabela’s in far north Fort Worth and drove two hours to the Texas-Oklahoma border.
They crawled down Interstate 35, going about 45 mph, in a convoy meant to protest and demand election transparency. As the group drove down the interstate, people gathered on bridges overhead to wave U.S., Texas and Trump flags and others passing by honked horns and held their thumbs up out of car windows.
There was no sign of counter-protesters or disturbances, though the convoy slowed traffic dramatically in efforts to keep all vehicles together.
Before the event kicked off, organizers said that they wanted every legal vote to be counted, but discredited other votes as “illegal.” They also wanted an investigation into election fraud in swing states that helped President-elect Joe Biden surpass the 270 electoral votes necessary to win the White House.
The group prayed for Trump and his campaign before starting their 124-mile round trip.
The organizer speaking prayed for peace and for Christians to stand up for election transparency and said she believes that whatever happens is God’s will.
Accusations of election fraud
At about 4 p.m., some of the caravan returned to Cabela’s, and about 30 people talked in the parking lot.
Caridad said he and his friend and co-organizer Dustin Edgington, from Keller, decided to proceed with the parade to draw attention to what he said was “illegal activity” that led to Biden being declared the winner of the election.
He said he does not think all of the mail-in ballots were legitimate.
“Too many ways to make mistakes and to open doors and windows for cheating,” he said about mail-in ballots. “We’re convinced that’s what happened. That’s why we’re here. We’re not here to fight, we’re not here to riot, we’re not here to do nothing wrong. We’re just here trusting and knowing that there is a truth and it is going to come alive.”
There is currently no evidence that mail-in ballots were sent illegitimately or election fraud led to Biden winning the 2020 election. Trump has repeatedly sown doubt about the legitimacy of mail-in ballots over the past few months
Caridad, who is from Venezuela, said he believes Democrats are trying to turn the country into a socialist nation, and he wants to stop that from happening. Venezuela is led by a socialist party, and Caridad said some of his family there “is living that nightmare right now.”
Edgington said he does not believe that people should have been able to vote through mail-in ballots and he also does not think they are real votes.
“Every night when you’re going to bed, there’s x amount of votes that are being cast,” he said. “And you wake up the next morning and you’re like where did they go, and where did these come from?”
The ballots Edginton is referring to are mail-in ballots.
David Casterline from Burleson said mail-in ballots that were not counted on Election Day should not count toward the vote.
He cited a circulating theory that Wisconsin had more votes cast than the number of people registered to vote.
The Associated Press debunked the theory, saying that the claim relies on faulty accounting of voter turnout in the state. Several posts about the count used outdated numbers and did not take into account the fact that people might have registered to vote on Election Day, AP reported. Wisconsin’s top elections official Meagan Wolfe is quoted in the AP story saying that the state does not have more votes than registered voters.
Casterline is worried about Biden becoming the president because of potential tax increases and a reversal of tax cuts that helped him save money. He also said his primary fear “is of communism” in the U.S. due to Democratic control of the White House.
Steve Kitchen, who drove to the parade from the Grand Prairie area, said he does not think the election was fair, and he accused Democratic leaders of cheating.
“They wanna make it look like they’re winning real closely because they’re cheating so much,” he said. “So they’re lying so much, they’re getting people to believe that it’s a close race even though it’s not. So in that process, they’re making it look like it’s a close race because they are cheating so much to stop the landslide of us winning big.”
He said he is not going to give up hope that Trump could still win the election.
“We still have a chance to overturn it,” he said.
This story was originally published November 8, 2020 at 6:41 PM.