May 12, 2020 09:38 AM UTC

Activist Who Launched Trump Re-Election Campaign in Colorado Now Leading Rally to "TAKE OUR FUCKING COUNTRY BACK"

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• by: Jason Salzman

(Pardon his French – Promoted by Colorado Pols)

John “TIG” Tiegen, who launched Trump’s re-election in Colorado in November, is organizing an aggressive protest Sunday to defend a restaurant that welcomed throngs of maskless customers last weekend.

Tiegen, who submitted petitions in November to place Trump’s name on the Colorado election ballot, identified himself at the time as the founder of “Colorado Veterans for Trump,” telling reporters at the secretary of state’s office that he was confident Trump would win the elections, especially with the economy booming.

Now Tiegen is much angrier, writing on Facebook, “Gov. Jared Polis, calling the restaurant an ‘immediate health hazard,’ has suspended the restaurant license of C&C Breakfast & Korean Kitchen in Castle Rock.

“ITS TIME TO FIGHT BACK PUSH BACK & TAKE OUR FUCKING COUNTRY BACK!”

Video of the Castle Rock restaurant packed with Mother’s Day clients swept across the country yesterday, leading Polis to suspend the eatery’s license for a month.

On his Facebook post, Tiegen is pictured in military garb, draped with weaponry.

“Let’s Stop the threats from our government,” he writes. “Let’s Stop the overreach of POLIS and his unelected Despots.”

He writes that “whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.”

Neither Teigen nor the Trump campaign could immediately be reached for comment.

The rally is another in a string of increasingly aggressive protests to re-open Colorado’s economy, even though the move to do so is seen as dangerous by health experts and opposed by the public.

Trump adviser Stephen Moore called a rally in Colorado “effective.”

Colorado’s Republican House leader Patrick Neville of Castle Rock is also defending the restaurant, writing in an email today, “Tell him to leave these honest, hardworking people alone.” Tiegen will lead a caravan of motorcycles and other vehicles out of Pueblo at 9:30 a.m. Sunday, arriving at the Capitol in Denver before the protest, which runs from 12 p.m. to 2 p.m.

The Facebook post makes no mention of social-distancing protocols for the rally.

Tiegen is best known as a former Blackwater contractor and member of the CIA’s security team involved in defending the U.S. embassy in Libya from an attack that led to the death of a U.S. ambassador during the Obama administration. Those falsehoods are chronicled in his co-authored book, “13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened in Benghazi.”