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By Tuesday, when a delegation from the convoy met with Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Brase indicated he was heartened just to get a meeting with elected representatives and some media coverage.

“I got what I was hoping for,” he said. “I got two respectful members of the Senate here, and I got all the media in this room to come and start covering. That’s a win for me. That’s a win for the People’s Convoy. Later today, we have more meetings, and tomorrow’s a new day. And the convoy’s going to keep rolling around that Beltway until we achieve what our goals are.”

Beginning on Sunday with an initial foray that barely made a dent in the Beltway traffic flow, the convoy appears to be diminishing by the day. It peaked on its first day with about 1,200 vehicles, including both rigs and personal vehicles, according to a homeland security official who spoke to Raw Story on condition of anonymity, and dropped to about 500 vehicles on Thursday.

Brase painted a more favorable picture during a speech to supporters on Tuesday. Mocking a reporter from the Daily Beast, he said, “He said ‘the Beltway defeated the convoy.’ We’ve doubled in size since that first time we’ve went around the Beltway.”

But despite some reinforcement from the American Truckers Freedom Convoy, an independent effort organized by Kip Coltrin, Brase acknowledged during the nightly meeting on Wednesday that the time away from work and fuel costs are putting a strain on drivers.

“You gotta leave and go back to work? Go do it,” he said. “Don’t lose everything you have. Many people are losing everything they have to be up here.”

The convoy has faced headwinds from two conditions beyond its control. The horrific war in Ukraine has overshadowed the effort. And the sudden lifting of mask mandates across the country took the first demand of the convoy off the table, forcing supporters to recalibrate.

“You know, this isn’t just about mandates,” Gerald Johnson, a trucker who livestreams on YouTube, told the crowd at Hagerstown Speedway on March 5. “Mandates is just the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

“It’s about control!” a man in the crowd yelled.

“It’s about control,” Johnson agreed. “You’re exactly right. They’ve been doing it way too long.”

Davy Mullennex, a 29-year-old independent truck driver from Colorado who said he was committed to the convoy for the “long haul,” also indicated he was not placated by decisions by the federal and state governments to lift masking mandates. Rather than taking the lifting of the mandates as a sign that government and public health officials are responsive to science and people’s needs, Mullennex said he sees it as evidence of bad faith.

“They’re not acting like this is an emergency,” Mullennex told Raw Story on Sunday. “And you have to ask yourself, well, why is that?... I think it’s that they’re power-drunk, and realize that this is an excellent way for them to push forward leftist, really left-leaning agendas, because that’s what they have done in many different areas. I think that that serves their purposes.”

Since the departure of the People’s Convoy — the main effort organized by Brase — from Adelanto, Calif. on Feb. 23, enthusiasm among prominent far-right figures has continually diminished. On the second day of the convoy, the America Project — a nonprofit whose public face is retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn — withdrew support for the convoy. Patrick Byrne — the former Overstock.com CEO who has pushed the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump, alongside Flynn — said in a video on Feb. 24: “I want to be clear that myself and the America Project are stepping away…. It’s not about the organizers of any of the convoys. We know it to be thoroughly and aggressively penetrated by the left. They are licking their chops over this. Really, don’t do it.”

Leigh Dundas, an anti-vaccination lawyer who aggressively promoted the Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election, parted ways with the convoy on March 3, the day before it arrived in Hagerstown. And former White House strategist Steve Bannon, who embedded a correspondent and featured almost daily interviews with organizer Maureen Steele as the convoy trekked across the continent, hasn’t talked about the convoy on his podcast since Monday.

Ivan Raiklin, an Army Reserves lieutenant colonel who was the first to promote the idea that Vice President Mike Pence should suspend certification of the electoral vote, joined the convoy during its inaugural lap around the Beltway on Sunday. Going live on Telegram, Raiklin suggested convoy leaders enlist the governors of Maryland and Virginia to blockade the District of Columbia and carry out arrests of federal government officials who have been in involved with the pandemic response.

Raiklin’s bizarre proposal called on the governors to mobilize the National Guard and state police so that “any federal officer… that has participated in any way in promoting the mandates or the vaccines, the masks… testing, vaccines, what else, folks that are in the [National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control & Prevention], all these different branches of the administrative state that illegally shut down businesses based on their illegal, unconstitutional policies, at this point need to be detained, arrested, put in pre-trial confinement, awaiting the results of their trial.”

Raiklin expressed hope that more people would join the convoy in coming days.

“So, you can see here, the Beltway is now just now beginning to be clogged up, and I would expect that more and more folks are going to be on the Beltway in order to make the noose tighter around the Washington, DC federal district,” he said.

But Brase and other convoy organizers have shown no inclination to escalate their tactics.

In the meeting with Sens. Cruz and Johnson on Tuesday, Brase emphasized that convoy organizers have previewed their plans the night before each foray to the DC Metropolitan Police, Maryland State Police and Virginia State Police. That night, at the speedway outside of Hagerstown, Brase told the crowd: “We’re gonna stay peaceful, law-abiding citizens while stretching our muscles, right?”

As the week has worn on, the grievances expressed by convoy participants have evolved into more general complaints about “politicians” and the media.

Referencing a kerfluffle over an initial stipulation that the convoy delegation wouldn’t be allowed to live-stream the meeting with the two senators, Brase said, “What we learned is that even on the right side of the aisle, some just don’t care what we have to say. What we learned is that there are plenty of people in office that are way too comfortable with their cushy seats.”

And on Sunday, Brase complained about media accounts reporting that “we fizzled out,” followed with a broad salvo that included right-wing media.

“So, Fox News, listen up,” Brase said. “MSNBC, NBC, CNN and whoever you may be, I think it’s probably time you come down here and see for yourself what’s really going on, because you’re starting to act like the politicians.”

With the limitations of the national convoy surrounding Washington, DC becoming apparent, the leadership has begun to downshift to a more dispersed strategy of targeting state capitols.

“I’m gonna tell those in the United States that could not make it to the convoy, but supports us — to those of you that want to do something to help, rally your people to your state capitals now,” Brase said on Tuesday. “Now is the time to put the pressure on the state capitols. Right now, while we’re here doing our thing, you need to be there doing your thing.”