The flimsy excuse and the high cost of a military parade for Trump's birthday

It’s too bad President Trump’s Vietnam-era bone spurs prevented him from first-hand participation in a military parade.

Generations of soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen will attest that it ain’t all that much fun. I know that from my 30-plus years in Army service as a private in the ranks, an NCO, and an officer – doesn’t matter whether you’re in the back or at the front of the formation. They’d rather have the day off.

Especially if it’s your birthday.

And particularly if the true purpose is an homage to the “base commander.”

Trump has wanted a pass-in-review of his very own since he witnessed a July 14 Bastille Day parade in 2017 as guest of French President Emmanuel Macron.

“We’re going to have to try and top it,” he promised.

Now comes together the “perfect storm” of birthday observances:

• On June 14, 1775, the Continental Congress authorized formation of the nation’s Army. (As a point of information, the National Guard was formed on Dec. 13, 1636, making it 389 years old.)
• On June 14, Fred and Mary Anne Trump became parents of their fourth child, Donald, in Queens, New York. Fred was the son of German immigrants and Mary Anne herself immigrated from Scotland. (Interestingly, Donald’s grandfather, Friedrich, emigrated from Germany to escape the military draft.)

Initial planning for observance of the Army’s 250th birthday did not include a parade. The Army birthday festival, in the planning stages for about two years, was to include an array of activities and displays on the National Mall, including Army Stryker armored vehicles, Humvees, helicopters and other equipment. As recently as April, the White House in a statement said that “no military parade has been scheduled.”

Shortly thereafter, though, creative minds in the White House saw opportunity and determined the Army’s Semiquincentennial, as 250th anniversaries are called, was the perfect cover to link the President’s 80th birthday and “to get this parade that President Trump has been wanting” said a staffer who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Trump’s hopes for a military parade down Pennsylvania Avenue in 2019 during his first term, à la the Bastille Day extravaganza, were deflated by costs estimated near $92 million.

We now find ourselves in a time when the chief executive is ordering sums slashed – the likes of which we’ve never seen before – from the federal budget and thousands of jobs eliminated without congressional involvement, all in the name of economy.

Cost estimates of Trump’s grandiose 2025 birthday parade are yet to be made public but if the 2019 event was $92 million …. Let’s see, a six-year inflation factor ….

But then again, we need remember who this guy thinks he is:

“… I run the country and the world,” he recently told The Atlantic magazine.

And now he showed us that he thinks he’s pretty good Pope material.

Columnist Peter D. Fox lives in Big Timber, and reports he was in more military parades than he cares to remember while on active duty and in Army National Guard service. Other veterans may agree that a big part of forming up was the “hurry up and wait” until dignitaries in the reviewing stand arrived and got settled. Fox was a journalist at The Billings Gazette, taught journalism and was the executive director of the Wisconsin Newspaper Association.

Daily Montanan is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Daily Montanan maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Darrell Ehrlick for questions: info@dailymontanan.com.