by ConservativeHQ.com Staff

The “Pittsburgh Not Paris” rally, organized at the last minute by the Fairfax County Republican Committee and the Republican Party of Virginia, brought several hundred supporters of President Trump to Lafayette Park near the White House.

The rally was dubbed “Pittsburgh, not Paris” in a nod to one of Trump’s lines during Thursday’s announcement Pittsburgh not Paristhat the U.S. would withdraw from agreement.

“We did this on 24 hours’ notice,” Matt Ames, Chairman of the Republican Party in Fairfax County, Virginia, told Donald Gilliland of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “We’re a county party; we don’t have a huge infrastructure. We did it to see what would happen, and people came from out-of-town. I think it’s great.”

Demonstrators held Trump campaign signs and signs reading “make America great again” and “thank you Mr. President.” Many carried flags.

And one even drove down from Pittsburgh to participate.

Vince Fusca, 65, of Churchill, gathered his favorite Trump signs, loaded them into his “Trumpmobile” and drove the 240 miles from Pittsburgh to Washington to be there. “All I gotta hear is ‘Pittsburgh’ – Boom! I jumped off my couch!” Fusca told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “If Pittsburgh is going to be represented by Fairfax County, Pittsburgh’s gotta go support ‘em.”

ABC reported that demonstrators chanted “Pittsburgh not Paris” and “jobs, jobs, jobs” to voice their support for the President’s decision to take the United States out of the Paris global warming treaty.

Conspicuous among the crowd were signs reading “CNN is ISIS,” an ironic jab at the mainstream media’s constant demonization of populists and conservatives. The phrase became a rallying cry as television cameras surveyed the crowd.

As the rally took place, the phrase shot into Twitter’s trending topics only to mysteriously disappear even as the volume of tweets climbed. Twitter has a long history of being accused of censoring hashtags popular with populist and conservative users and using other techniques to contain the outbreak of right-leaning outrage on the social media network observed Breitbart’s Ian Mason.

One rally-goer carried, with a bemused grin, a sign emblazoned with both “CNN is ISIS” and a Shepard Fairey-style image of now-dismissed CNN guest host Kathy Griffin in her roundly condemned gory photoshoot holding a bloody severed effigy of the head of the President of the United States. He explained to Breitbart News:

We’re trying to hold CNN’s feet to the fire, as its propagandists are hellbent on destroying our President and his supporters. Sure enough, “CNN is ISIS” quickly became the #4 trend on Twitter. Kathy Griffin’s stunt was nothing short of reprehensible, and it’s imperative we make sure she and her employers at CNN receive the backlash they deserve. Conservatives need to do a better job of reframing these narratives. I’m always happy to expose the hateful elements within the American left.

However, not everyone in Lafayette Park was happy with the President.

According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, June Sonier Gerwald, a high school teacher from New Jersey sight-seeing in the capital, screamed herself hoarse objecting to the Trump support. “We have to know — as Americans — this guy has no brains,” she said. “I don’t know if it’s because he’s not sleeping or if he was born that way.”

“I’m sorry he has to take all of this abuse,” Marilyn Ochs of Bethesda told Dennis Foley of WTOP radio while holding a handwritten sign. “But he can take it!”

“We basically think it’s a bad deal for the country. It’s an example of the kind of unilateral decision making President Obama was making,” said GOP committee chairman Matt Ames.

He told WTOP radio this is not about the climate.

“If you work for the federal government, if you live in the D.C. area, I think, in principle, you care about good government,” Ames said.

Ames said if this had been handled like a treaty and had gone through the Senate, President Trump would not have been able to make the decision to leave the agreement.

“We believe that there is a climate issue and we need to solve it,” GOP committee executive director Steve Buckingham said while passing out “Trump-Pence” stickers. “But signing an agreement that has no enforcement, no mechanism to enforce any aspect to it, is ridiculous.”

“President Trump is the president for all Americans, not just the ones who voted for him,” Buckingham said. “For us, the whole ‘Pittsburgh not Paris’ has really resonated.”

Many attendees were not at the event to support or oppose the Paris agreement. They came out to just offer some support to the president.

“We know he’s always getting a lot of heat for always doing the right thing,” Donna Widawski told WTOP. “The president has their back. The president is trying to do the right thing.”

“He’s our last hope,” said Ms. Ochs, a self-proclaimed original tea partier who believes establishment Republicans are the real enemy. “We gave the Republicans the House, and they stabbed us in the back. We gave them the Senate, and they stabbed us in the back. We gave them 33 governorships, and they stabbed us in the back. He is our last hope… We will never turn on him — ever — because we know what he is.”

The Fairfax County GOP’s Pittsburgh Not Paris rally was a huge success garnering media coverage all over the world. We urge our conservative friends to do the same thing in their communities, Put the notice out on social media, hit your email list, make some signs and be surprised at how many people show up at your impromptu demonstration.

Reprinted with permission from ConservativeHQ.com