The national furor over the situation in Los Angeles is bleeding into the debate over the massive military parade scheduled for Washington this weekend.
The parade’s official purpose is to mark the 250th anniversary of the Army. But the day of the parade, June 14, is also President Trump’s birthday.
The intersection of the two dates led to criticism from liberals from the moment the parade was announced, with allegations flung that it will amount to a strongman’s show-of-force rather than a patriotic celebration of the American military.
Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), herself an Army veteran, wrote on social media last week that the money being used on the parade could be better spent helping with necessities like food and child care for troops “if it was really about celebrating military families.”
“But it isn’t,” Duckworth added. “Trump is throwing himself a $30 million birthday parade just to stroke his own ego.”
The critique is being turbocharged by events in Los Angeles.
There, Trump has ordered the deployment of more than 4,000 members of the National Guard as well as 700 Marines in response to disorder around immigration protests. Some cars have been burned by protesters angry at actions taken by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and objects, including Molotov cocktails and rocks, have been thrown at law enforcement.
In response, Trump has called out the Guard against the express wishes of Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) and amid criticism from other local officials, including Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass (D). It is the first time the Guard has been deployed without the agreement of the relevant state’s governor since 1965, when former President Lyndon Johnson sent federal troops to Alabama to protect civil rights protesters.
Some of Trump’s most dramatic announcements — including the suggestion that Los Angeles would have burned to the ground — have been met with derision from some quarters. Democratic critics have also asserted Trump’s actions have inflamed the situation where de-escalation is required.
“For the president to do this when it wasn’t requested, breaking with generations of tradition, is only going to incite the situation and make things worse,” Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) wrote on social media that the deployment of federal troops was “an abuse of power and a dangerous escalation. It’s what you would see in authoritarian states and it must stop.”
There are, of course, many supporters of Trump’s actions, who celebrate his much harder line on immigration enforcement in general, and contend that left-leaning protests have sometimes been treated too leniently when protesters have engaged in violence or vandalism.
Immigration remains Trump’s strongest issue in most opinion polls and was an effective line of attack for him in last year’s election campaign.
Either way, the debate over Los Angeles sharpens the controversy over the forthcoming parade.
Trump offered a preview, of a kind, when he visited Fort Bragg, N.C., the nation’s largest military installation, on Tuesday.
Lines of troops formed the backdrop for a speech in which he offered a vigorous defense of his actions in relation to California, saying his intervention was necessary to protect federal immigration agents from “the attacks of a vicious and violent mob.”
“What you’re witnessing in California is a full-blown assault on peace, on public order and on national sovereignty carried out by rioters carrying foreign flags,” Trump said.
He also contended that, in the case of Los Angeles, an American city was being “invaded and conquered by a foreign enemy.”
Earlier in the speech, Trump had briefly — and more mildly — previewed the weekend parade.
He cast the event as a chance for the nation “to show off a little bit.”
But even in Fort Bragg, there was a reminder about how events that feature both a politician and the military can edge into questionable areas. Some of the troops arrayed behind Trump, for example, expressed support for the president’s criticism of some Democratic officials, such as Bass, by booing on cue.
The weekend parade in Washington is forecast to cost up to $45 million, including $16 million the Army has budgeted as an upper ceiling for the cost of repairing streets in the District of Columbia after tanks have rolled down them. More than 100 military vehicles are expected to be involved, and the Army will bring in as many as 9,000 troops, according to NBC News.
The cost of the festivities has drawn some dissent even from Republicans.
According to Fox News’s Jennifer Griffin, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said he had “never been a big fan of goose-stepping soldiers in big tanks and missiles rolling down the street. So if you asked me, I wouldn’t have done it. I’m not sure what the actual expense of it is, but I’m not really — we were always different than the images you saw of the Soviet Union and North Korea.”
Griffin also quoted Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) as saying: “I wouldn’t spend the money if it were me. The United States of America is the most powerful country in all of human history. We’re a lion, and a lion doesn’t have to tell you it’s a lion.”
Kennedy added, “I would save the money, but if the president wants to have a parade, he’s the president, and I’m not.”
Security will be tight in the nation’s capital, and progressive groups are planning counterdemonstrations against Trump’s military parade. One event, alluding to what organizers see as Trump’s creeping authoritarianism, will be called “No Kings Day.”
But Trump, earlier Tuesday, upped the ante about any potential confrontation this coming Saturday.
“If there’s any protester wants to come out, they will be met with very big force,” he warned.
The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage.
