Editor's Note: This blog is from Conrad Yates, a self pro-claimed True Conservative™ who voted for Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and most recently, Terry McAuliffe in the Virginia Governor's race (he shared his reasons for these votes here). Mr. Yates proudly and unironically contributes to the Lincoln Project. On January 6th, 2021, Conrad Yates traveled from his home in Alexandria, Virginia to Washington D.C. to counter-protest against the Stop the Steal rally. This is his story, which we agreed to publish.
This is a story I thought I'd never share with anyone. This a story that I wish I'd never have had to share (and I wouldn't have had to share it if not for DRUMPF!).
This is my January 6th story.
That day started like any other day. I woke up, drank a cup of joe while watching MSNBC's Morning Joe (get the pun?) threw on my Vineyard Vines boxers, my Vineyard Vines socks, my Vineyard Vines khakis, Vineyard Vines button-down, and my favorite periwinkle blue cashmere sweater from Ralph Lauren.
My first mistake of the day was deciding to fill up my official Lincoln Project coffee tumbler with some extra java before hopping in my Tesla to head down and protest against the Stop the Steal rally in D.C.
You see, I don't typically don't drink two cups of coffee (stains my dental implants and makes me too jittery sometimes), but that day I figured I was going to need all the energy I could muster to fight LITERAL Hitler and his minions - so I indulged a second cup.
The trek to DC was long and arduous, made worse by all of the slack-jawed MAGATs driving next to me on the GW, Trump flags flapping in the wind. I called 911 several times to report them for hate crimes, only to be told by various operators that nothing could be done to stop them.
If driving with a Trump flag on your car ISN'T illegal, it SHOULD be.
Parking near the rally was essentially non-existent. I ended up parking in the lot of a little Mexican restaurant quite a ways from the National Mall. When I started walking from my car, a little Mexican man, who claimed to be the owner called me a "maricon" and told me that this parking lot was for "customers only".
When I told him I was parking here to defend democracy, he looked at me sideways, called me a "maricon" and told me I had to move. I decided to, instead, walk inside the restaurant and order a breakfast burrito - making me a customer and privy to parking privileges.
While the undoubtedly undocumented workers prepared my burrito, I could hear them conversing in their native tongue. It made me think about how terrible DRUMPF had treated these people during his reign of terror.
I began to weep as I heard one tell the other "gringo maricon en el suéter azul" and "Me cago en tu burrito" - phrases I didn't understand, but I'm sure they were probably talking about how happy they were that Trump's reign of terror was about to come to an end.
I grabbed my burrito and did a walk and eat for most of my nearly mile long journey to the literal Trump Insurrection Rally.
In retrospect, that burrito ended up being the best part of my day.
I arrived just in time to see Satan himself tell the crowd to "fight like hell", which caused a chill to run down my spine.
Don’t let the fake news media (aka Faux News) lie to you, there were millions of MAGATs in DC that day. It smelled like Monster Energy Drinks and body odor from having to work blue collar jobs - it was a nauseating array of sycophants aiming to threaten our Democracy and do insurrection stuff.
I could tell, trust me.
I would not, however, be deterred - so I threw on my Drumpf mask and started carrying around a sign I made with my wife that read "Give up, MAGATS, Biden won!"
Before I knew it, a slew of slanderous MAGATs hurling insults at me. One called me a "phaggot" (nice try, I have kids, bucko!). Another called me a "cuckold" (nice try, that was only one time and I got to go second!).
Then, one particularly vile cretin screamed in my face "get the fuck out of here, you fucking cum guzzling liberal!" and took my sign from me.
When I explained to him that I wasn't a Democrat, that I was ACTUALLY a True Conservative™ who voted for Biden and other Democrats, he looked at me cross-eyed, ripped up my sign and urinated all over the remains.
His behavior was atrocious, his urine was golden brown and smelled like asparagus - but this crowd of goons laughed harder than I do during Stephen Colbert's monologue (i.e. very, very hard).
I was about to go give this guy a solid punch to the jaw until I felt a VERY sharp pain in my stomach. At first I thought I may have been having a heart attack, but then I began to feel an all too familiar pressure on my rectum.
There was no time to exchange blows with this MAGAT - a two-coffee, grande breakfast burrito morning was calling in its debt, I needed to find a bathroom and fast.
The problem was that Trump's speech had just finished and I was five thousand people deep in a crowd heading towards the Capitol.
I pushed my way through as hard and fast as I could, but the throngs of ravenous insurrectionists made it nearly impossible to get through.
Sweat was forming on my brow and my stomach was in knots as I looked all around for an escape. Then, to my great relief, I located a port-a-potty some ways down the road.
Struggling my way through the crowd like a salmon swimming up stream, I let out a fart in a desperate attempt to relive some of the pressure on my stomach.
It was then when I felt some undesired rectal discharge run down my leg.
I was hoping nobody would notice, but the smell was more toxic than Tucker Carlson's monologue (i.e. very, very smelly). People began to scrunch their noses and locate the origin of the noxious odor, it wasn't long before someone pointed to my pants, now tinted brown with my shame and began to shout "this Lib shit his pants!"
The only upside to my odorous embarrassment is that the crowd, in effort to distance themselves from my disgusting display of public shitting, created a clear pathway to the port-a-potty, which was I was able to reach before defecating all over my self once more.
The port-a-potty was covered in urine and what I could only hope was horribly misplaced handsoap - but it did not matter - this port-a-potty was my filthy blue oasis. As I emptied the remainder of my bowels, I could hear the crowd chatter outside the thin plastic walls. They began screaming additional insults at me like "this isn't San Francisco, we don't shit on the street here!" and "this guy is incontinent, just like JOE BIDEN!"
Not before long, the crowd dispersed and I was forced to use my shirt and sweater as toilet paper, which I proceeded to throw down the toilet hole along with my pants, socks and underwear.
Wearing only my Trump mask and standing in a feces covered portapotty, feeling scared, desperate and cold, I screamed "help!" not knowing if I was about to bring more trouble to my shit covered door step.
Instead, I began to hear an elderly woman's voice through the plastic door.
"Are you ok?" She asked.
"No, ma'am, I'm not" I replied and began running through the story of how I found myself pleading for her help.
She said she "felt terrible" for me and then proceeded to survey others in the crowd to see if they could spare an item of clothing to help cloth me in my time of need.
When she assembled an outfit to cover my naked body, I unlocked the door and laid eyes on my unlikely MAGAT heroine:
After getting dressed, I spoke briefly with my would-be savior, Dolores Cunningham, from Athens, Georgia.
It turns out Dolores attended the rally with her son, Sanford, to try a keep him out of trouble. They decided to make the drive down from Athens, Georgia, because they voted for Trump and they had some unresolved questions about how ballots in Atlanta were counted the night of the election.
She said that she and her son didn't think that Trump actually won the election, but that there were some legitimate concerns about how voter rolls are rarely purged and that it invites the opportunity for foul play.
Sanford echoed his mother's sentiments, adding that all they wanted "was for someone to provide an answer to the numerous mathematical and logical aberrations that occurred on election night".
I thanked them for their help and asked for their address, so I could send her a thank you card. They obliged and we said our good-byes.
I immediately returned to my car, drove home, took a hot shower and then burned the clothes given to me by these cretins.
It wasn't until a few hours later that I turned on the TV to discover what had transpired at the Capitol. I quickly called the FBI to report Dolores and Sanford Cunningham for their role in the Trump insurrection.
They're both currently being held without bail in federal prison, awaiting trial.
So yes, while I may not have been directly involved in the fracas that occurred at the Capitol, I am a Jan 6th survivor and will forever carry with me the trauma of that day.
Many people consider me a hero for consigning a woman and her son to abject misery, despite the fact that they had been nothing but kind to me that day. I'm not sure I'd call myself a hero (I'll leave that up to you) because I was did was I was attending to do all along, attend the rally to defend democracy.
That's what True Conservatives™ do.