The Daily - Who’s Organizing the Lockdown Protests?

Episode Date: April 22, 2020

Across the United States, protests are erupting against orders to remain at home, close nonessential businesses and limit travel. So who is behind these protests? And what do they stand to gain? Guest: Jim Rutenberg, a writer-at-large for The New York Times.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Background reading: Conservative groups in a loose coalition have tapped their networks to drive up turnout at recent rallies and financed lawsuits, polling and research to combat the stay-at-home orders.Crowd sizes at the protests remain small — ranging from a few dozen to several thousand at a rally in Michigan. Polls suggest that most Americans are in favor of cautious lockdown measures.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today. Across the U.S., protests are erupting against orders to remain at home and to restrict people's movements. Jim Muttenberg on who is behind those protests and what it is they stand to gain from them. It's Wednesday, April 22nd. Jim, tell us about these protests. Well, it starts a week ago, Monday, April 13th, kind of out of the blue, seemingly.

Here is a group of protesters show up in Columbus, Ohio. We are full grown adults. We know how to protect those that are around us. Mr. DeWine, open us back up. protect those that are around us. Mr. DeWine, open us back up. And demand that Governor DeWine, Republican governor, who's imposed very strict stay-at-home restrictions, they're demanding reopen the state, reopen the economy. Let's get back to work. Then the next day, there's another rally, this time with the same demands in North Carolina, in Raleigh.

Folks, this is your third and final opportunity to leave the parking lot. If you don't disperse immediately, you will be subject to arrest. You will be arrested and processed into Wake County Jail if you don't leave the property immediately. And this time the protest results in an arrest. Then the next day... You have a very big protest, the biggest protest in Michigan. And this one is the biggest one we'd seen, called Operation Gridlock. we'd seen called Operation Gridlock.

It's a dreary day in Lansing, and all around the state capitol, as far as the eye can see, are lines of cars. Hunking. Their passengers and their drivers chanting, freedom. Freedom is essential. Fear is a choice. Their windows open, signs saying end the lockdown,

freedom over tyranny. Even Pharaoh freed the slaves during a plague. My husband is on unemployment for the first time in our life. And it's unwillingly that we're taking unemployment. We want to go back to work. It's time for our state to be opened up. We're tired of not being able to buy the things that we need. The only stores open are Walmart.

That's ridiculous. That's why we're here. And all of it is directed at Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who has put in some of the toughest stay at home restrictions in the whole entire country. And she has banned going to garden shops. So one of the protesters says to a TV reporter, You can't buy paint. You can't buy lawn fertilizer or grass seed or whatever. I mean, come on. All statewide? Really?

Complaints about people can't go to their second homes. If you have a second home in the state, you can't visit that second home. But if somebody lives out of state, they can come into a vacation home. A cardinal sin by the governor to some people is she says, no water skiing, no use of jet skis. This is a lake state, a great lake state. So there's an incredible pent-up anger, and it's spilling out on these streets.

It was the biggest protest to date, and the anger was palpable and seemed very sincere. And Jim, was there a sense in places like Michigan that these grievances are legitimate? Some of these restrictions, for example, on jet skis, motorboats, home garden stores, felt unusual. Absolutely. And, you know, well, on the one hand, though, let's keep one thing in mind. Michigan has been hit particularly hard. I mean, they have a tremendous public health burden and the governor is trying to meet that. On the other hand, she has imposed some of the toughest restrictions in the country. And these are restrictions that go at the very heart of

American freedom. You can't go to your own home. You can't leave your one home for another home. People from two different households can't commingle. I mean, these go against the kind of fundamental ideas about private property rights. So there's very understandable anger welling up over some of these, no matter what has motivated these restrictions. When the coronavirus hit Michigan in force last month, Whitmer had no clue what to do. So she responded with a mixture of comical ineptitude and a weird kind of arbitrary fascism. As these protests roll out, they're becoming a cause celeb in conservative media. By the way, there are uprisings all over this country against governors and their restrictions.

They're getting tons of play. Rush Limbaugh, all the talk radio hosts. Stay in our houses. We bubble people. We've got to be tracked in real time. So they're wearing a state police outfit. Alex Jones, the conspiracy monger on mine. The American spirit is too strong and Americans are not going to take it. And what happened in Lansing today, God bless him.

It's going to happen all over the country. But you have ample coverage on Fox News's regular news programming as well. And in fact, it's on Friday. In Minnesota, the demonstrators didn't even wait for their own planned protest for today. During a Fox News segment about the protest, this one in Minnesota. We started to see some tweets from the president of the United States. We started to see some tweets from the president of the United States. Liberate Minnesota. Liberate Michigan. Liberate Virginia. All in capital letters.

So this is the president openly encouraging these protests. He's taken himself right to the front of the line. Right. It's around this point that I started to look at this and think, this has the makings of a movement. Precisely. It's got everything that we've come to see in any modern political movement. It's crowds outside of state houses. It's the same sort of signage. It's a protest movement that's come together very, very fast and getting a lot of attention. And we start wondering, my colleague Ken Bel and I, like, what's behind this? Movements, they take some organization. They take getting the word out to people and negotiating with the authorities on the street about, you know, where the protesters

can be, especially in these new conditions. So we start wondering, how is this all coming together? Certainly a movement, but all movements have organizational structures. What's going on here? And what did you find? Well, as we often find, it was complicated. It involved some familiar conservative activist groups playing major roles behind the scenes. Some of the conservative donors who we followed over the years were involved behind the scenes. There were many tentacles from Washington leading into these various state protests, basically driven by people whose main concern probably isn't solely whether you can go to the store tomorrow and buy some grass seed. We'll be right back. So Jim, as you're trying to figure out who and what is behind these protests, where did you start?

Well, the good news for us was at first we didn't have to do a ton of digging. It was right there in plain sight in Michigan. It turned out that one of the big groups that helped organize the protests, promote the protests, even speak for the protest, was called Michigan Freedom Fund. And Michigan Freedom Fund has as its chairman a gentleman named Greg McNeely. It turns out Greg McNeely is very close to a big conservative family in Michigan that donates to a lot of conservative causes, the DeVos family.

That family's activism in Michigan, especially around charter schools, is what led President Trump to hire one of them, Betsy DeVos, to be his education secretary. So this is a connection to the White House right there out in the open. Of course, Mr. McNeely said

he was not coordinating with the White House, but the connections were right there in plain sight. And it really intrigued a lot of us. Okay, so what did you find next? Then we started looking at some of the Facebook posts for Operation Gridlocks. You know, Facebook posts for the Michigan protests, for the protests in New Mexico, for the Maine protests. And we noticed that the language for a lot of these promotions for them on Facebook is exactly the same.

There's a line that runs through a couple of them. People always say conservatives never protest because they are too busy working. Well, guess what? You're not working, was the joke. And this repeats across a lot of these Facebook groups. Just, you know, obviously coming from the same place. So we don't know where that same place is at this point.

We just know that there's something going on here that's national in scope and involves some coordination. Then we get, you know, the kind of thing that happens sometimes that you're very happy when it happens as a reporter. I got a kind of out of the blue call from a progressive group called True North. And they found. Hey, if we're live, I'm going to start talking. How's that? A fascinating little clip from YouTube. We can talk public policy and drink at the same time. A tiny YouTube show. There

are 300 views on this thing. We decided to call up our old friend, Steve Moore, who's at home. Steve, how are you? So did the Gazette take you back? No, no. And it's Stephen Moore, a longtime conservative activist. My wife says I'm a metrosexual because I'm drinking a wine spritzer. A one-time potential nominee for President Trump to the Fed board and a close sort of economic advisor to Trump from the outside. If we don't open the economy by May 1st, we are in really, really deep trouble. And he says. We saw protests today. I'm working with a group in Wisconsin that wants to do a drive-in.

I'm working with a group to organize a protest in Wisconsin. This is great. We have one big donor in Wisconsin. I'm not going to mention his name. And I told him about this. He said, Steve, I promise I will pay the bail and legal fees for anyone who gets arrested. Steve, I promise I will pay the bail and legal fees for anyone who gets arrested. And I've even got a donor lined up who's ready to pay the legal fees of anyone who gets arrested.

So this is a great time, gentlemen and ladies, for civil disobedience. We need to be the Rosa Parks here and protest against these government injustices. These are the modern day Rosa Parks fighting for freedom and liberty. Wow. Yeah. Everybody here, let's raise a toast to Steve Moore. Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you, Steve.

Thank you, Steve. Go, go, go. All right, that's great. Now, we noticed something really interesting about the timing of that video. He says this on April 14th. Well, that was an important day for Stephen Moore because he was also named that very same day to a presidential commission about reopening the economy, President Trump's sort of task force. Huh.

Yes. And then we started looking at what Stephen Moore had been up to over the past couple of weeks. And then we started looking at what Stephen Moore had been up to over the past couple of weeks. And it turned out that he was working with a couple of other groups to pressure the White House to open the economy sooner. Now, two of those groups were called FreedomWorks and ALEC. And those groups have been major players in the old Tea Party movement. The Tea Party movement, of course, was this overwhelming conservative sort of rebellion that sprung up around the country basically a decade ago to agitate against the bailouts of the financial crisis and their perceived overreach of the Obama administration.

FreedomWorks had initially been founded with help from the billionaire Koch brothers. So it had big billionaire donors behind it. So lo and behold, the next step is Ken Vogel, my colleague who's written a lot about these donors and these issues, finds that FreedomWorks has itself been directly involved in helping to organize some of these

reopened government protests. Huh. So suddenly, these major conservative players turn out to be highly involved in encouraging these protests. Exactly. And groups that had been through this before during the Tea Party and knew what they were doing. through this before during the Tea Party and knew what they were doing. And then finally, it comes to our attention that a big law firm has come to the defense of a protester arrested in Raleigh. This firm is called Michael Best. And wouldn't you know it, this firm is very closely tied to the White House.

this firm is very closely tied to the White House. It has among its ranks, Reince Priebus, the former RNC chief and Trump White House chief of staff. It has a lawyer who's currently helping the Trump organization fend off requests from Congress for its tax information. And then it has an attorney who's currently, right now, working as a special counsel to President Trump's campaign. This firm just couldn't be more closely connected to the president. We spoke to the partner there in North Carolina who said there was no coordination here. But again, an uncanny connection to President Trump. So what you're finding, Jim, are wealthy conservative donors, well-established conservative activist groups, and some important figures that are connecting these protests or their promotion

straight back to the Trump administration. Yes. And what do you make of that? You know, I guess what we do as reporters is we only stick to what our reporting shows. So what we don't have reporting, at least as of right now, showing that somehow this was a top-down, the White House has concocted this plot to create these protests that help the president. What we do have is people connected to the White House,

at least in Mr. Moore's case, directly working with the White House, are helping these protests along, stoking them, providing them the financial wherewithal where they see they need it. Just these tentacles that kind of go to the president and to these major conservative groups that have long been on the scene trying to push against big government. And Jim, what is the interest of these conservative

groups and activists in pushing, facilitating, encouraging, whatever word you want to use, these protests? I mean, to put it word you want to use, these protests? I mean, to put it simply, what's in it for them? Well, the motivating factors are myriad, right? Part of this is these groups are supported by donors who want this economy open. They want to see cars on the road. I mean, have you seen the price of oil lately?

They want people going into stores and buying products, the products they make. These donors are very much part of the economy in a very big way. So there's personal interest. There's philosophical interest. This is a movement born with the belief in personal freedom and government can't tell you what to do. But underlying a lot of it in terms of the big donor, big group side, there's also the fact that this whole crisis

is potentially very damaging to President Trump's approval ratings. And ultimately, and this is the most important ultimate thing here, President Trump's re-election. All of these groups are heavily invested in seeing him win, most of all, the White House itself, the president.

And how does this nascent movement assist in that project of getting President Trump re-elected? You know, at a time when there can be no rally for President Trump, he can't be in these arenas. This is a form of that. It's galvanizing people. It's hitting their emotions and getting them actually, amid a pandemic, out in the streets, in many cases, waving his flag. As much as this may suggest that these protests are not entirely spontaneous, it feels like that's kind of always the case with protests, right?

I mean, behind any large crowd on the National Mall or outside of state capital, it feels like invariably are deep-pocketed donors and activist groups that specialize in putting people together. I mean, you know, thousands of people don't just show up on their own, right? So what makes this any different? What makes this one unique in any of our experience is the nature of the protest. It's happening during a pandemic. And what is being encouraged here, and the organizers are very aware of this and trying to be careful about it, is go out in public around other people at a time when going out in public and being around other people has been deemed a threat to the public health.

Something that's going to get in the way of stopping the spread of this virus so that we can all get back to normal. Mm-hmm. So, Jim, that makes me wonder, why would the president, who's out there on Twitter saying, liberate Michigan, liberate Virginia, liberate Minnesota, and why would the people around him, why would they want to be associated with these protests if there's a risk, a very real risk, that if these protests achieve what they aim to achieve, people could end up getting hurt? Well, they're pretty open about that question, and they don't shy away from it, the ones we've talked to. And their answer would be some of this, they believe, is being overhyped. That some states may be in a better position to open than others and should be opened. And that a flailing, depressed economy is bad for the nation's health. And at the very bottom of it all is we're a free

nation. And this is a cost-benefit analysis that is going to have to be done at some point. So there are giant ideological questions in this and philosophical questions in this, mixed in with the very real public health implications that, as you've pointed out, are pretty serious and pretty severe. I'm curious how successful you think these protests have been so far in achieving their stated goal of pressuring these governors to start easing these lockdowns. Well, on the one hand, we're already starting to see an easing in states like South Carolina and Tennessee and Georgia, where those governors are moving ahead with plans to open back up. Now, those governors probably were eager to do that anyway and have a political situation in their states where their public is there with them.

In Michigan, however, we see Governor Whitmer sticking to her guns. So I think one thing we really have to keep in mind here is, so far, this is not the Tea Party. It's not an overwhelming, huge protest movement that's going to make every governor buckle. And in polling, we're still seeing that majorities in this country support these stay-at-home orders and don't want to see the government rush too quickly to reopen everything. That said, if we've learned anything over the Trump era, it's that the loud minority can really dictate policy. And that's why we really have to keep an eye on these protests. They could tell us a lot about what's going to happen over the coming weeks and months in terms of this country getting back to some semblance of normalcy.

And let's not forget, what we've now learned is a lot of very powerful people are invested in seeing these protests continue and grow and ultimately succeed. Succeed. Thank you, Jim. Thank you, Michael. On Tuesday, the Attorney General, Bill Barr, said he would consider taking legal action against governors whose restrictions on their citizens' movements infringed on their constitutional rights. In a radio interview, Barr said that the Department of Justice would first seek to pressure the governors to roll back such rules, but would not rule out joining citizens' lawsuits to overturn them. Over the coming days, more protests against stay-at-home orders are scheduled in Missouri, Pennsylvania, Maine, Virginia, and Kansas.

We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. Therefore, in order to protect American workers, I will be issuing a temporary suspension of immigration into the United States. On Tuesday night, President Trump announced that he would stop issuing green cards that allow foreigners to move to the United States, closing off the country to tens of thousands of people seeking to join family members or to accept employment. It would be wrong and unjust for Americans laid off by the virus to be replaced with new immigrant labor flown in from abroad.

We must first take care of the American worker. Take care of the American worker. Immigration advocates immediately accused the president of using the crisis to carry out a long-planned assault on the country's legal immigration system, a claim that Trump denied. And, after days of negotiations, the White House and Congress reached a deal on a $484 billion relief package that would replenish an emergency loan fund for small businesses. That fund quickly ran out of money before thousands of companies could even apply. At the core of our agreement is $320 billion more for the Paycheck Protection Program, which is already saving millions of small

business jobs and helping Americans get paychecks instead of pink slips. Under pressure from Democrats, the package also provides money for hospitals and coronavirus testing and requires that the Trump administration prepare a national strategy for testing. We don't have enough tests. That cry rings from one end of America to the other, to urban, suburban, rural, north, east, south, and west. We don't have enough tests. Well, now help is on the way because Democrats stood and fought for it.

The House is expected to pass the same measure later this week. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.