Trump Blames Hegseth For His Birthday Parade Failure

 

This is by Julia Ornedo in The Daily Beast:

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.

That didn’t escape Trump, who pointed the finger at his defense secretary, according to Wolff.

“He kind of reamed out Hegseth for this,” the Trump biographer said. “Apparently, there was a phone call, and he said to Hegseth, the tone was all wrong. Why was the tone wrong? Who staged this? There was the tone problem. Trump, he keeps repeating himself.”

“It didn’t send the message that he apparently wanted, which is that he was the commander in chief of this menacing enterprise,” Wolff added.

Most Say The Parade Is Not A Good Use Of Government Money

The chart above is from the AP / NORC Poll -- done between June 5th and 9th of a nationwide sample of 1,158 adults, with a 4 point margin of error.
 

Trump Orders His Military Parade Be Held On Veterans Day

(Cartoon image is by Dicky Neely at Laguna Madre Blues.)

Donald Trump is jealous of the world's autocrats. They get to have a military parade to show off their power and control, while American presidents have not done that (and that offends Trump's narcissism). He asked the military to arrange a parade in Washington (DC) to allow him to review our military power.

The problem Trump has is that the American public doesn't want his military parade (see chart below). Majorities of all voters, both genders, all ages, and all races/ethnicities all are opposed to the parade. They don't want to copy tyrants like Kim Jong-Un, and think such a parade doesn't display strength (but weakness). Everyone knows the U.S. has the strongest military in the world, and showing it off in a parade doesn't enhance that view.

Trump doesn't care what Americans want though. He has ordered his military to have one anyway. But to disguise his narcissistic desire, he has set the date for the parade as November 11th -- Veterans Day. He will try to pass of his vulgar display of narcissistic power as a tribute to veterans.

Americans don't oppose parades honoring our veterans (and neither do I). But those parades should actually be made up mainly of veterans and tributes to veterans -- not missiles, tanks, and other weapons of war.

Trump has already shown us he doesn't like diplomacy, and indeed, doesn't have the intelligence and sensitivity to effectively engage in it. Trump is a bully, and his military parade is just another of his efforts to bully the world into cooperating with what he wants. It won't work. It'll just make this country look petty and ridiculous.

The chart below is from a recent Quinnipiac University Poll -- done between February 16th and 19th of a random national sample of 1,249 voters, with a 3.4 point margin of error.

Two Responses To Trump's Request For A Military Parade

Donald Trump wants a military parade through Washington, D.C. -- so he can emulate his authoritarian heroes. I was going to rant about this -- but I couldn't do better than the two responses below. The first is a serious response from retired Major General Paul Eaton, and the second is satire from the inimitable Andy Borowitz.

General Eaton writes:

Donald Trump has continually shown himself to have authoritarian tendencies, and this is just another worrisome example.

For someone who just declared it was ‘treasonous’ to not applaud him, and for someone who has, in the past, admired tactics of everyone from Saddam Hussein to Vladimir Putin, it is clear that a military parade isn’t about saluting the military – it’s about making a display of the military saluting him.

The military is not Donald Trump’s to use and abuse in this way. Our military is the very best in the world – they are not the be reduced to stagecraft to prop up Donald Trump’s image.

Any commander in chief who respects the traditions of the military would understand that.  Unfortunately, we do not have a commander in chief, right now, as much as we have a wannabe banana republic strongman.

Mr. Borowitz writes:

The Pentagon has turned down Donald J. Trump’s request for a grand military parade in Washington, D.C., citing a sudden outbreak of bone spurs that would prevent men and women in uniform from participating.

Harland Dorrinson, a Pentagon spokesman, said that, within an hour of Trump’s request, more than a hundred thousand military personnel complained that they were suffering from acute cases of bone spurs that would make marching in such a parade a painful ordeal.

“In the history of the U.S. military, we have never experienced a bone-spur epidemic of this magnitude,” the spokesman said. “Regrettably, however, we have no choice but to issue thousands of deferments.”

A statement from the bone-spur sufferers said that they would continue to valiantly serve their country around the world in a non-marching capacity, and offered an alternative to their participation in Trump’s proposed pageant.

“President Trump is welcome to march in the parade all by himself if he would finally like to enlist,” the statement read.