There’s almost nothing that Donald Trump wants more than a military parade. That seems like a strange thing for a President who’s never served in the military to want, especially during a time in our nation when troop deployment is not at wartime levels. Perhaps the President has been watching Captain America movies.
The more likely reality than Trump being a Marvel fan is that he wants to look like a War President. Many American leaders have desired the same, although the majority of them had some sort of military background. Trump’s obsession seems to stem from the imagery he sees in the countries whose despotic or dictatorial leaders he has publicly praised: China, Turkey, the Philippines, all hold military parades in which the leader dresses up in a uniform and is glorified as the arbiter of peace and war, a symbol of strength in situations when those leaders might not otherwise have much going for them, popularly speaking.
Finally, Donald Trump had his parade planned, and he was thwarted once again — defeated in his battle for a pageant of patriotic paratroopers by the cost of holding the spectacle.
Price tags have never posed too much of a hindrance to Trump’s decisions, but it’s one thing to take a totally normal everyday trip to one of your multimillion dollar golf resorts to play a few rounds when nobody has any idea how much of their money you’re spending to do so. A parade, however, comes with a public price tag. And when Trump was hit with the sticker shock of the parade he wanted to hold in the nation’s capital, he blamed it on the city government’s greed and avarice:
The local politicians who run Washington, D.C. (poorly) know a windfall when they see it. When asked to give us a price for holding a great celebratory military parade, they wanted a number so ridiculously high that I cancelled it. Never let someone hold you up! I will instead…
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 17, 2018
….attend the big parade already scheduled at Andrews Air Force Base on a different date, & go to the Paris parade, celebrating the end of the War, on November 11th. Maybe we will do something next year in D.C. when the cost comes WAY DOWN. Now we can buy some more jet fighters!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 17, 2018
Aside from the fact that Trump apparently plans to be outside of the United States on one of our most important holidays, Veterans’ Day, he seems to be holding out hope for something that isn’t going to happen. And the “local politician” who runs the city was quick to let him know:
Yup, I’m Muriel Bowser, mayor of Washington DC, the local politician who finally got thru to the reality star in the White House with the realities ($21.6M) of parades/events/demonstrations in Trump America (sad). https://t.co/vqC3d8FLqx
— MurielBowser (@MurielBowser) August 17, 2018
For the record, the total cost of the parade was estimated to be upwards of $90 million, of which the cost quoted to him by D.C. government represents less than a quarter. The rest is simply the logistics of holding a military parade. That’s setup and teardown, troop movements, weapons safety, and depending on what kind of things he wanted in the parade, transportation of potentially deadly heavy equipment through a city center.
Oh, and in case Trump was planning on holding his parade next year on Veterans’ Day in D.C., a group we just reported on has some words for the Commander-in-Chief:
FYI: VoteVets has submitted a Letter of Intent, with DC, to do a 5K around the National Mall, for Veterans Day 2019.
So, unless he kicks out a veterans race, @realDonaldTrump will not get his ego parade there, on that day next year, either.#NoTrumpParade
— VoteVets (@votevets) August 17, 2018
Watch CNN’s report on the exchange here:
Featured image via screen capture
