CNN
—
Flying home from his first visit to Paris as president, an awestruck Donald Trump told aides aboard Air Force One that the military parade he’d just witnessed was one of the most dazzling spectacles he’d ever seen.
Get to work, he told them. He wanted one at home.
Eight years later, after several failed attempts during his first term, Trump will finally get his wish. The parade set to roll down Constitution Avenue in Washington, DC, on Saturday will amount to the largest display of military might in the nation’s capital at least since 1991, when a parade of tanks, troops and missiles marked the end of the first Gulf War.
The optics of Saturday’s event, celebrating the US Army’s 250th anniversary but coinciding with Trump’s 79th birthday, have not been universally embraced. During Trump’s first term, military officials warned against a show of force they said was more at home in North Korea than the United States.
Now, some current and former military officials worry about an unfortunate split-screen, with US troops deployed on domestic soil in Los Angeles while Trump examines military hardware from a reviewing stand in Washington. Both scenes seemed certain to fuel protests, also scheduled for Saturday, accusing Trump of acting like a despot.
There is nothing to indicate the president or his current advisers are remotely concerned the parade might send the wrong message.
“No one ever calls Macron a dictator for celebrating Bastille Day,” one official told CNN, referring to the French president who hosted Trump in 2017.
For his part, Trump is vowing a patriotic show unlike anything seen before.
“It’s going to be an amazing day,” he said this week. “We have tanks. We have planes. We have all sorts of things, and I think it’s going to be great. We’re going to celebrate our country for a change.”
The event will see a massive amount of military hardware and personnel being paraded through Washington, including 28 Abrams tanks — weighing 70 tons each — rolling down Constitution Avenue, where Trump will preside.
Different eras of Army history will be represented with vintage uniforms and equipment, from the Revolutionary War through to modern day. Members of the Army’s Golden Knights parachute demonstration team are scheduled to land near Trump’s platform and hand him an American flag. Also set to be featured: a World War II-era B-25 bomber, 6,700 soldiers, 50 helicopters, 34 horses, two mules and one dog.
Military officials have downplayed the price-tag of the parade, estimated to be around $45 million.
Interruptions to Washingtonians began earlier in the week, with road closures and preparations for tight security. Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport is set to pause airline operations for a period on Saturday evening during a flyover and fireworks displays.
With nationwide “No Kings” demonstrations planned for the same day to denounce Trump’s second-term tactics, the scene in Washington could become tense.
The president this week warned anyone protesting his event to reconsider.
“For those people that want to protest, they’re going to be met with very big force,” Trump said, hardly putting to rest accusations he is behaving as an authoritarian.
Planning for the Army’s semiquincentennial began before Trump was elected last year. Initial plans called for a smaller event: a few hundred troops, a concert by the Army Band, and a seated audience of several dozen and a packaged broadcast special focusing on the military.
But Trump’s return to power changed things. Long in favor of a major military display in Washington, he’d at last found a suitable reason — and more willing advisers — to arrange the parade of his dreams.
The president has participated in some of the planning, and his aides worked to produce an event that matched his vision. Dozens of meetings have been held, many of which have included Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Secretary of the Army Daniel Driscoll, who a source said have been involved in the finer details of planning the event.
Officials have estimated that the parade will cost tens of millions of dollars of public funding, which does not include the tens of millions of dollars that was privately sourced.
Democrats have been relatively uniform in their opposition.
“We all know that this Saturday he’s ordering our American heroes, the United States military, and forcing them to put on a vulgar display to celebrate his birthday, just as other failed dictators have done in the past,” Gov. Gavin Newsom of California said in an address this week denouncing Trump’s decision to deploy National Guard troops and mobilize active duty Marines in his state.
Trump’s actions in California — which, like the parade, illustrate the ways he’s reshaped the military since taking office — have not been met with much resistance from Republicans.
But even some members of Trump’s own party have expressed skepticism about the parade, and many have said they don’t plan to attend.
“Well, look, it’s the president’s call. I wouldn’t spend the money if it were me,” Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy said when asked about the event. “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. Everybody else in the jungle knows.”
Even before that fateful visit to Paris in 2017, Trump had envisioned tanks and troops rolling through Washington. His transition team asked Pentagon officials in late 2016 about using military vehicles during his first inaugural parade, but the idea never came to pass.
Trump did not give up on his vision, though, and his visit with Macron in July 2017 only cemented his desire for a grand military parade at home.
The French event featured gun trucks, tanks, horses, airplanes and helicopters all advancing down the Champs-Élysées toward Trump and Macron, who reviewed the procession side-by-side from a stand at the Place de la Concorde. At one point, fighter jets flew overhead from the direction of the Arc de Triomphe blazing red, white and blue.
“It was one of the greatest parades I’ve ever seen,” Trump recalled a few months later when he was meeting Macron at the United Nations. “We’re going to have to try to top it.”
And try he did for the next several years, only to face resistance from both his own military brass and local officials in Washington, who worried about the effect 70-ton tanks would have on the city’s streets.
His first defense secretary, James Mattis, was adamant to his aides that “precious taxpayer dollars would be better spent elsewhere, and that the optics of such a display of power would boomerang, causing more harm to America’s international prestige than any domestic benefit could outweigh,” according to a book later published by his speechwriter, Guy Snodgrass.
Mattis — who carefully chose which battles to wage with Trump — said privately he’d “rather swallow acid” than orchestrate a military parade through Washington, Snodgrass wrote, but told the president he would “look at some options.”
Trump eventually surrendered on his first-term demands after spiraling cost estimates — one figure circulated was $92 million — rendered a military extravaganza infeasible. He sought to pin blame on Washington’s local government, but many Pentagon officials at the time breathed sighs of relief when the parade plans were scrapped.
The ensuing years saw Trump preside over air shows and static displays of tanks in Washington, but never a parade. He didn’t quite abandon hope for a grand military procession, but when he left office in 2021 a political pariah, there seemed little chance it would happen.
Trump’s remarkable political comeback — which left him emboldened and mostly unencumbered by more cautious aides — offered a second chance. Early in his term, Army officials proposed scaling up their modest anniversary event to the grander celebration now in the works.
The parade of his dreams now within reach, Trump was eager to sign off.
That it happened to fall on his birthday, multiple officials insisted, was a matter of coincidence.
“It is my birthday, but I’m not celebrating my birthday,” Trump said this week. “It happens to be the same day, so I take a little heat.”
