Protesters made a tiny footprint at the RNC in Milwaukee

MILWAUKEE — As Donald Trump entered the Fiserv Forum on Monday, the first night of the Republican National Convention, thousands of delegates and GOP faithful stood and raucously cheered.

MILWAUKEE — As Donald Trump entered the Fiserv Forum on Monday, the first night of the Republican National Convention, thousands of delegates and GOP faithful stood and raucously cheered.

Five blocks south, at Zeidler Union Square Park — one of two so-called First Amendment zones that city and U.S. Secret Service officials had designated for protests this week — there was no sign of a convention going on at all. 

At the precise moment Trump appeared inside the arena, there were exactly zero people in either Zeidler or the other designated zone — Haymarket Square, one block north of the convention.

Donald Trump on stage at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on Thursday. Mustafa Hussain for NBC NewsThat those zones — as well the entire downtown area outside the hard perimeter where people were allowed to pass through and congregate — were utterly barren, despite what progressives have said is a groundswell of opposition to the former president, underscores one the biggest surprises of the week: There was very little protest activity during the GOP’s four-day nominating convention in the crucial battleground state of Wisconsin.

“I am very disappointed,” said Omar Flores, the lead organizer for the Coalition to March on the RNC, the only large leftist protest to have taken place in Milwaukee during the RNC.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/protesters-rnc-milwaukee-rcna162253

---