David Fry was a plant to make them all look stupid.
I don’t think so.
He actually exposed the Pacific Patriot Network in the last days of the protest because PPN claimed that Fry and the others were intent on violence if the PPN had led a march into the refuge to take them out.
PPN’s leader sent conflicting messages calling people into the area, then telling them to stand down after LaVoy Finicum was killed and Ammon Bundy and the others arrested.
PPN opposed the protest at the beginning but then claimed they were serving as some sort of ‘buffer’ between the protest and the FBI coming on with tough guy talk.
But at the time the FBI swung into action killing LaVoy and making the arrests, the PPN faded off into the background and intimidated or scared most of the people still at the refuge into leaving with some of them ending up being arrested by the FBI when they left.
David Fry was beyond their control and he kept the protest going. God Bless David.
Gary Hunt’s “Outpost of Freedom” blog discussed the protest in a series of posts including his own speculation about the motives of some of those who claimed to be the friends of the protest after they came out against it.
I think PPN’s ‘buffer’ role was sort of like those “community leaders” in Ferguson, Missouri who were Democrat operatives standing between police and protestors trying to prevent more violence that would cause a white voter backlash against Democrats.
PPN was there in my estimation as a buffer to help the Republicans avoid any incident that would cause backlash against them.
All of the Republican presidential candidates wanted the protest to end and that’s what PPN was trying to do at the end, shut down the protest.
But David Fry messed them up for a few weeks.