By Canadian Press

Protesters register frustration in U.S., but experts suspect an ulterior motive

Apr 20, 2020 | 11:36 AM

WASHINGTON — The partisan cracks in America’s collective effort to combat COVID-19 are growing wider by the day — fuelled, some say, not by grassroots sentiment but by political forces both within and outside the United States.

Hundreds of protesters, many without face masks, are packed together outside the Pennsylvania capitol building in the city of Harrisburg to demand that the state be allowed to reopen at the end of the month.

It’s just the latest display of what appears to be escalating American anger at the stay-at-home orders that have shuttered businesses, fuelled jobless claims and paralyzed the U.S. economy since mid-March.

Political observers, however, call them “AstroTurf” protests, driven and financed by conservative action groups sympathetic to President Donald Trump, and amplified by foreign actors in Russia, China and elsewhere.

They point to recent polls in the U.S. that show broad public support for the stay-at-home effort as evidence that a majority of Americans don’t sympathize with the cause of demonstrators.

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Similar, if smaller, protests have cropped up in recent days in capital cities in Washington, Virginia and Maryland, all of them modelled after one last week in Michigan, where Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has been a frequent target of the president.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 20, 2020.

The Canadian Press