Seven years after a military parade in France captivated the president, Donald Trump is finally getting to throw a parade of his own.
On Saturday, military vehicles, equipment and soldiers are set to march down Constitution Avenue. The administration is hailing the day as an opportunity to celebrate and honor the armed services on the 250th anniversary of the Army. It also happens to be Trump’s 79th birthday.
It’s a marked contrast from eight years ago when Trump administration officials were openly scoffing at the idea of a parade. Retired Navy Cmdr. Guy Snodgrass, a former aide to then-Secretary of Defense James Mattis, wrote in a book that Mattis said “he’d rather swallow acid” than watch the parade.
This time around, there hasn’t been any friction or resistance to the plans, an administration official told NOTUS, which have been in the works since 2023. The Secret Service began planning for the event on April 22.
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A Republican strategist close to Capitol Hill pointed out that unlike Trump’s first term, there’s no one to tell the president “no” this time around.
“Another example of first term advisors being so different,” the strategist said.
During Trump’s first term, a Bastille Day parade in Paris so impressed him that he insisted to a group of advisors that “we should do that too,” according to former White House director of legislative affairs Marc Short.
But the idea was squashed by naysayers in and outside of Trump’s orbit who argued it was inappropriate and expensive. Short described competing concerns about optics, costs and disruption to the city that prevailed in helping nix the idea during Trump’s first term. This time around, it’s estimated to cost between $25 and $45 million dollars and no one in the administration appears opposed to it.
Though things seem to be copacetic within Trump’s orbit, criticism abounds from outside it.
“It is unprecedented, dangerous and manipulating our military for political goals in a way that we’ve never seen before. I think that’s the bottom line,” said Paul Rieckhoff, CEO of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. “This has always been what he wanted to do, but there were guardrails that stopped him.”
The parade is taking place on the heels of another display of military force not seen in decades. In Los Angeles, Trump mobilized the California National Guard and deployed hundreds of Marines to quell protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in the city.
Democratic lawmakers are also increasingly fearful that Trump will use his power against them, especially following the aggressive removal of Sen. Alex Padilla from a Homeland Security press conference and the indictment of Rep. LaMonica McIver.
Another military veteran, who was a government official in multiple administrations, decried what they viewed as Trump’s politicization of the armed services in light of the deployments to LA and this parade.
“The generals and the admirals don’t have to consider, how is this going to play in the midterms, right? They don’t have to consider what the party or the base is going to think about this,” said the former official and Marine Corps veteran. “They’re just looking at it strictly from an operational, military, strategic standpoint, and giving the president options. And so in that context, President Trump doesn’t like having leaders that will tell him things he doesn’t like or doesn’t want, and that too puts the military in a very precarious situation.”
Military planning for the event started in late April, according to one Defense official granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the event. The events of the past week have been a “problematic time for planning,” this official said.
Yvonne Chiu, a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute studying defense policy and authoritarianism in Asia, said that while the parade in and of itself isn’t inherently concerning, the context of recent events have inflamed the situation.
“The military, deservedly, has a very strong and respectable reputation for being professional. The parade itself could help buttress that reputation at the same time as this other stuff is going on, with deploying military troops to a situation that doesn’t require it at the moment. That does run the risk of casting the military in a negative light.”
Very few Republican members of Congress have come out against Trump’s use of the military in Los Angeles or of the parade, though many aren’t going out of their way to attend.
Even Republicans who criticized the idea of parade during Trump’s first term shrugged it off this week. One of those members, Sen. John Kennedy, told NOTUS this week that while he’s still not the biggest fan of the parade, it isn’t keeping him up at night.
“If it were up to me, I’d save the money. I mean, America is the most powerful country in all of human history,” he said. “We’re a lion, and a lion doesn’t have to tell you he’s a lion. Everybody else knows you’re a lion. So if we’re up to me, I would save the money, but I’m not pressed about it.”
District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser — who claimed she was the most essential impediment to Trump’s military parade in 2018 — said in March that military vehicles rolling through the district’s streets would “not be good” but has done little else to block it. The administration official told NOTUS that the mayor’s office was “easy to work with” and “accommodating.”
The coordination with the military, the Defense source told NOTUS, was one of the smoother aspects of the planning process. They said that interagency coordination was “very accommodating” as well, and core to the parade being successful.
Law enforcement agencies say they expect “hundreds of thousands” of people to be in attendance, though it’s unclear where those estimates are coming from. “No Kings” protests have been planned throughout the country, though none are set to take place in D.C. according to organizers — Trump has said that any protests in the district would be met with “heavy force,” though the administration has insisted that the president supports peaceful protests.
“We want to show off a little,” Trump said this week.
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Violet Jira is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow. Jasmine Wright is a reporter at NOTUS.
John T. Seward, a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow, contributed to this report.
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