Trump's Single Finger Salute to America
Bread and Circuses.
“This is so goddamn stupid.”
It's what a lot of us kept saying under our breath.
Donald Trump's less than subtle commandeering of the Army's 250th anniversary celebration was an obnoxious, high security spectacle of absurd self-gratification. Instead of allowing citizens to get educated about the role the armed services played in the founding of the country, and its current function, the National Mall was covered in the same high fencing used to secure the Capitol after the January 6th insurrection so helicopters and APCs and various small arms could be staged for photo ops.
The whole thing culminated in a rather dreary parade with tanks, drones, flyovers, parajumpers. And it all just happened to fall on Trump’s birthday.
It felt like a recruitment campaign, though one less centered on the military and more on the cult of Trump. After all, neo-Nazis have been using the military and law enforcement as a training ground for decades…
It's been reported that this all started as a spin-off of Twilight Tattoo, an annual reenactment of the US army's transformation from a colonial militia to our contemporary World Police force. A couple of media executives saw the show and told the military brass, “This would make great television.”
It's no secret Trump has wanted a military parade since French President Emmanuel Macron invited Trump to witness the annual Bastille Day celebration in 2017. Back then, Trump boasted, “We may do something like that on July 4th in Washington, down Pennsylvania Avenue. I don’t know. We’re going to have to try and top it.”
He did not, of course, top it.
Instead he held a rally on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial under similarly miserably hot and humid conditions in 2019. Everyone had to suffer through a boring Teleprompter speech under scattered storms. DC Mayor Muriel Bowser and the City Council refused to let Trump run tanks down Pennsylvania Avenue, so all he got were two Bradleys and a few fly overs.
On TV, it all looked kind of shitty. Just a bunch of uncomfortable suits wallowing in swamp-ass season. And the videos I've seen over the last 12 hours suggest this parade somehow looked even worse on TV than it did in person.
I was nowhere near the stage. I didn't know that the US Army Band Downrange played anti-war songs, like the could-have-been-penned-about-the-Draft-Dodger-in-Chief Fortune Son, or that Trump slurred his way through another Teleprompter speech before sycophants in the crowd began singing happy birthday. On Friday, Amanda Moore reported America250, the group responsible for putting this all together, was a shitshow before the MAGA acolytes turned it into a bloated logistical nightmare, and a cash-grab with sleazy sponsorships.
Though Trump threatened serious repercussions on anyone who dared disrupt his (estimated) $45 million taxpayer-funded MAGA masturbation party, there were a handful of protesters.
All of them were peaceful and silent, some were more noticeable than others. One man held a large blank sign. Another carried a tattered sign that simply read, “Trump is a rapist.” Two people on the Mall sat smiling with signs that read, “We the people serve No King,” as passers-by cheered and jeered. One man sat on a curb in a hat that read “Resist,” with a sign that read, “Go Army, Beat Fascism.”
David Finkel, 60, of Alexandria, Virginia, was walking around the entrance to the festival grounds in a “Fuck Trump” T-shirt with a white Canadian maple leaf. “I wanted to see what kind of action I’d get when we’re supposed to be honoring the Army and not the orange guy in the White House,” Finkel said with a grin.
Dawn Brooks, 53, of Largo, Maryland, was sitting atop a large inflatable Baby Trump suit on the Mall along the parade route. Her husband was trying to find eight batteries that would power the suit. Much like their shop, PoliticsandPorn.com, they wanted to say that DC was “all dicks and assholes” for allowing Trump to use taxpayer money to throw himself an authoritarian birthday parade.
I spent much of my time standing atop a tree stump on one foot at Constitution and 21st. There were a number of journalists, myself included, that considered leaving early to file, avoid rain, and get some rest. It was a pain in the ass to see anything, and because the hub of the parade was at the Ellipse in front of the White House, most of the route felt eerily quiet as the heavy diesel engines from tanks and APCs and light transport vehicles trundled along.
Some of the soldiers wore long faces. Some couldn’t march in cadence. Others mugged for cameras while some seemed to forget they were supposed to wave at the crowds.
Based on the fact that much of the press corps was left in the dark about the event logistics, Trumpland seemed to care more about making sure The Boss looked good on television. Whether America's Fourth Estate could perform the role the Founders intended was once again an afterthought — if it came up at all. We wouldn’t want the president to come across as a self-obsessed and senile con-artist with no history of public service, who was currently using the image of military and veterans as a political cudgel while his congressional minions were shamelessly stripping them of their benefits.
What buffoon would want any outside event in DC in mid June? If you have never been, let me paint you a picture. Imagine the smallest bathroom with a shower. Now run the shower on its hottest setting for 30 minutes with the door closed. After that, walk into that bathroom fully clothed. That's DC in summer. It's offensive and rude
I'm sorry Dominic had to cover this crap instead of having fun at one of the No Kings rallies.