It is one vainglorious outrage after another in this White House. If you write about some dumbfounding scandal in the morning, another is fairly likely to arise by the afternoon. That’s the idea, of course: President Trump is trying to wear everyone out, to overload us, to atomize our attention.
So, let’s slow down for a moment … and focus. This weekend, instead of charging taxpayers millions for yet another golf outing, Trump is instead charging taxpayers tens of millions to throw himself a military birthday parade.
This Saturday, June 14, dozens of military aircraft, hundreds of armored vehicles, and thousands of U.S. troops will descend upon Washington, D.C., to take part in a parade. Sycophantic feds have been parroting the lie that the parade is to honor the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army, though we all really know it is to stroke Donald Trump’s ego on his 79th birthday.
There were no plans for such a military parade before Trump personally intervened weeks ago in the planning of the celebration of the Army’s 250th year. Like when Trump’s favorite former weekend Fox News host restored the name of “Fort Bragg” from “Fort Liberty” by finding some random brave soldier who happened to be named “Bragg” and then pretended it was a coincidence that he shared a last name with the camp’s former namesake, Confederate monster Braxton Bragg, the official fig leaf is fooling no one.
The Army estimates this 75-minute birthday parade will cost taxpayers $25 million to $45 million. Since the military quite famously spends way more than it thinks it is going to on almost everything, I wouldn’t put too much stock in that already vague estimate.
Trump assures us that the cost will be “[p]eanuts compared to the value of doing it,” much as he assured us that “Mexico is paying for the wall” that Mexico did not actually pay one penny for. To be clear, there is no value to be gained by needlessly tearing up the streets of the nation’s capital as a bunch of 60-ton Abrams tanks that get 0.6 mpg roll over them.
I am far from the first to point out that military parades on leaders’ birthdays are far more common in weak foreign dictatorships than in strong western democracies. Strong nations have not found blocks of marching soldiers to be intimidating for quite a long time.
Meanwhile, in Ukraine, where our allies are actually bravely fighting a brutal war in defense of democracy rather than putting on war-themed street theater, the Trump administration continues to jerk U.S. support. Most recently, Trump’s defense secretary redirected 20,000 specialized anti-drone weapons that the U.S. had already promised Ukraine to the Middle East instead.
Canada continues to step up to help fill the void created by the Trump administration. Instead of pointlessly driving military equipment around Ottawa, this June our neighbor to the north is sending $22 million worth of its Bison and Coyote armored vehicles to Ukraine to be used against the Russian invaders. It is a drop in the bucket compared to the billions in aid Canada and other countries have already pledged to Ukraine, yet it’s a notable one considering how American taxpayers are spending a similar amount on armored vehicles this weekend.
What do you think makes a nation look stronger on the global stage: showing the world it has plenty of advanced military equipment to spare when the time comes to assist an ally in desperate need, or using tens of millions to shatter the pavement of its own capital city so that its president can feel like a big shot on his birthday?
President Theodore Roosevelt, a real patriot, a combat veteran, and deserved winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, popularized and applied to his foreign policy what he believed was a West African proverb: “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” Trump’s foreign policy, on the other hand, as exemplified by his birthday military parade, could be better characterized as, “Speak loudly but carry a limp dick.” Enjoy your parade, MAGA.
Jonathan Wolf is a civil litigator and author of Your Debt-Free JD (affiliate link). He has taught legal writing, written for a wide variety of publications, and made it both his business and his pleasure to be financially and scientifically literate. Any views he expresses are probably pure gold, but are nonetheless solely his own and should not be attributed to any organization with which he is affiliated. He wouldn’t want to share the credit anyway. He can be reached at [email protected].