Given the hellscape that is unfolding in the Middle East and the police state that the US has become (with the only good news being that India and Pakistan have pulled back from the threatened brink of a war), to talk about relative crowd sizes at the Trump parade and the No Kings protests seems trivial. But given Trump’s obsession with crowd sizes being a key marker of his popularity, I think it is worthwhile to needle him by pointing out that his parade was, to a large extent, a disappointment. Of course, his cult followers will claim that it was just gigantic but Trump was there and must know that it was a dud, nowhere near the spectacle that he sought to emulate, the Bastille Day parade in France or the Russian military parades in Red Square.
There is a report that he castigated defense secretary Pete Hegseth for the poor showing.
President Donald Trump was unhappy with his sparsely attended military parade over the weekend and blamed it on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, biographer Michael Wolff revealed.
Wolff told The Daily Beast Podcast that Trump wanted a “menacing” show of force to celebrate the Army’s 250th anniversary and his 79th birthday on Saturday—but got a “festive” parade instead.
“He’s p—ed off at the soldiers,” Wolff said. “He’s accusing them of hamming it up, and by that, he seems to mean that they were having a good time, that they were waving, that they were enjoying themselves and showing a convivial face rather than a military face.”
As thousands of soldiers flanked by tanks made their way past empty bleachers along Constitution Avenue in Washington, D.C., social media users pointed out that the soldiers were marching out of sync, and the muted atmosphere appeared to match the gloomy weather.
…Wolff said Trump had put the word out, via his spokesperson Steven Cheung, that at least 250,000 people were in attendance.
“That was from Trump,” Wolff said. ”‘Put it out, 250,000.’” Wolff said the people he knows who attended the event said it was actually “maybe” 40,000.
…Publicly, Trump has insisted that his parade was a “tremendous” success even after it was overshadowed by “No Kings” demonstrations across the country, which drew in millions of Americans who protested against the president’s sweeping immigration agenda.
“Last night was a tremendous success with a fantastic audience,” Trump told reporters on Sunday. “It was supposed to rain. They gave it a 100 percent chance of rain and it didn’t rain at all. It was beautiful.”
It is telling that Trump is reduced to boasting that although the weather forecast called for rain, it did not in fact rain in DC although it was overcast, as if the weather gods care about him. Of course, if it had rained, that would have been an excuse for the poor crowds.
Meanwhile, while there are varying estimates of the number of people who attended the 2,100 No Kings protests, there is no doubt that they ran into the millions and vastly outnumbered Trump’s small parade crowd. Democracy Now! covered both events and had this report. It is worth listening to 15-year old Rue Sadler at the 5:00 minute mark. The reporter also spoke to several other teenagers and it was encouraging to hear their passion.
Meanwhile, listen to this response from Trump’s gang to the claims that Trump was ticked off because the parade was a bust.
Responding to the claims, the White House blasted Wolff once again as “a lying sack of s–t” who “has been proven to be a fraud.”
“He routinely fabricates stories originating from his sick and warped imagination, only possible because he has a severe and debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted his peanut-sized brain,” White House communications director Steven Cheung told the Daily Beast.
What kind of language is this from the White House communications director? Don’t these people have any sense of the dignity of the office they hold, that they should not resort to childish insults? But we are dealing with the utterly uncouth Trump administration, so this is to be expected all the way from the top down.
He’s pissed off? Excellent. This means I may have been wrong, to an extent, and it did actually penetrate his skull that the US Army wasn’t showing its best face, its war face. Maybe, just maybe, it might dawn on him that they’re not his personal plaything.
Now, whether he realises the implications of that, or whether he’s already moved on to the next thing (Iran? Who knows?) I couldn’t say, but again, I doubt it. But I said it before: the Army’s performance that day was indisputably deliberate, and reflects orders from the very highest uniformed level. The US Army is many things, but is it is not deliberately sloppy. Displaying sloppiness in such a context was a public statement, and one more people should be applauding. If only they realised…
I suspect there was a disconnect between what Trump expected because he was thinking May Day parade in Moscow, and what the army had planned. This parade started as a celebration of the founding of the Army, not a celebration of the leader or a threat to somebody. The goal wasn’t to make the army or state look frightening, it was to remind people of the history of the Army and help it’s public image.
The band playing John Fogarty’s (Creedence Clearwater Revival) Fortunate Son had to be a deliberate taunt at “Bone Spurs”
Some folks are born made to wave the flag
They’re red, white and blue
And when the band plays “Hail to the Chief”
They point the cannon at you, Lord
It ain’t me, it ain’t me
I ain’t no senator’s son, son
It ain’t me, it ain’t me
I ain’t no fortunate one
Some folks are born, silver spoon in hand
Lord, don’t they help themselves, yeah
But when the taxman comes to the door
The house look a like a rummage sale
It ain’t me, it ain’t me
I ain’t no millionaire’s son, no, no
It ain’t me, it ain’t me
I ain’t no fortunate one
Yeah, some folks inherit star-spangled eyes
They send you down to war
And when you ask ’em, “How much should we give?”
They only answer, “More, more, more”
It ain’t me, it ain’t me
I ain’t no military son, son
It ain’t me, it ain’t me
I ain’t no fortunate one, one
It ain’t me, it ain’t me
I ain’t no fortunate one
It ain’t me, it ain’t me
I ain’t no fortunate one
Trump wanted something like this, Prussian goose-stepping and all.
“East Germany Had the Best Military Bands in the World”
https://youtube.com/shorts/2ToGmy9wNR4
Is this really the first time you’ve noticed Steven Cheung being rude and insulting to even the mildest criticism? It’s been par for the course since he joined Team Trump, along with outrageous sycophancy towards Trump. I suspect he has ambitions of becoming Trump’s Baghdad Bob.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/sad-secrets-of-400lb-man-who-crafts-trumps-insults-author/
Owlmirror @#5,
Cheung has long been known for being pugnacious and vituperative and using crude language. But it is one thing when you are doing these things in a political campaign (even though it it still ugly) and quite another when you occupy a senior government position and are effectively speaking for the president.