Everybody loves a parade, right? President Donald Trump does: He is overseeing a lavish military parade Saturday in Washington, D.C., ostensibly to celebrate Flag Day and the Army’s 250th birthday. But the event comes amid a Trump-ordered National Guard deployment in Los Angeles, and critics see something dark at play in Trump’s celebration.
Reactions to the parade are divided between those who see it as a “stirring moment of patriotism” and others calling it an “alarming echo of authoritarianism,” said USA Today. Trump originally wanted to throw a military parade during his first term after watching Bastille Day celebrations in 2017. Pentagon leaders resisted him then. Not now. The procession will include at least “28 Abrams tanks thundering up Constitution Avenue” as well as “50 military helicopters thumping overhead.” All of this happens, incidentally, on Trump’s 79th birthday. It is “amazing the way things work out,” Trump said last month.
‘Display of jingoism’
Trump’s parade “perfectly distills his presidency,” Zeeshan Aleem said at MSNBC. The procession of military equipment on Constitution Avenue is a “wasteful, infrastructure-destroying display of jingoism” with an authoritarian vibe “far closer to a Russian military parade than a Bastille Day celebration.” The estimated $45 million cost of the parade comes as the president and his DOGE workers “take a chainsaw to agencies that deliver Social Security, tax revenue and foreign aid.” It’s typical of a term defined by “baldly despotic stunts and policies.”
The president is taking the Army’s birthday celebration and “turning it into a party for himself,” David Rothkopf said at The Daily Beast. In democracies, the military is an “instrument of national defense, serving the people.” In authoritarian countries, the armed forces are a “weapon the government wields against its own citizens.” The question this week, amid deployments in Los Angeles, is whether America has “crossed a dangerous line in that regard.”
Celebrating the Army’s achievements?
“Sometimes a parade is just a parade,” Kori Schake said at The Atlantic. Showcasing the American military should be a “patriotic celebration” and the Trump administration’s actions are not always “destructive to democracy.” Instead, the parade could “bring Americans closer to service members and juice military recruitment.” That would help American armed services in the midst of a recruiting crisis. Hopefully Trump’s parade will “draw talented young Americans to serve.”
Army veterans are “divided” over the parade, said The Associated Press. Some vets see the event as “chest-pounding commonly seen in North Korea” while others view it as a “once-in-a-lifetime accounting of the Army’s achievements.” In any case, it appears most GOP members of Congress will not attend, said Politico. Some are openly skeptical, while others say they are simply busy. “I just didn’t get to go home last week,” said House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole.
There will be counterprotests across the country. The “No Kings Day” events organized by more than 100 “pro-democracy groups” are expected to be the “largest single-day anti-President Trump rally since the start of his second administration,” said Axios. Trump is not interested. Any protests at the Army parade, he said Tuesday, will face “very heavy force.” Other complications could ensue: Forecasters say it might rain in Washington, D.C. on Saturday.
Critics see an ‘echo of authoritarianism’