Conservative rips Trump for 'tainting' what should be a 'unifying American moment'

Saturday, June 14 was an intense news day in the United States, from President Donald Trump's military/birthday parade in Washington, D.C. to more than 2000 No Kings Day protests against it to the shootings of two state lawmakers in Minnesota.

Some of the anti-Trump protests had a huge turnout: According to NBC News 10 Philadelphia, an estimated 80,000 people showed up for the Philly's No Kings protest. Trump's military parade, however, didn't have the attendance that MAGA Republicans were hoping for.

During a Tuesday, June 17 appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," Never Trump conservative David French argued Trump himself undermined the parade and "tainted" what should have been a positive event.

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"I think Americans broadly don't mind a celebration of the Army," French told "Morning Joe" hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski. "Of course, the cost has to be reasonable. It can't be too much. But I don't think Americans mind a celebration of the Army at 250 years. That's a long record of courage and sacrifice and service that helped make the American experiment possible in the first place. And so, I don't think Americans mind that. The problem, though, comes against the backdrop of a larger context."

Scarborough, also a Never Trump conservative, and French agreed that the U.S. Armed Forces should be honored and celebrated. But they viewed Trump's military/birthday parade as an exercise in self-promotion on the president's part.

French alluded to Trump's decision to send U.S. Marines to Downtown Los Angeles in response to protests.

"When Trump has his fingerprints all over something," the conservative journalist told Scarborough and Brzezinski, "it's importing a lot of larger context. And so, it's one thing to have a 250-year celebration in the United States Army. It's another thing to have it right in the midst of a potentially illegal deployment of the Army to Los Angeles. It's one thing to celebrate 250 years of the Army; it's another thing to do it right after he went to an Army base and held what looked like virtually a political rally at an Army base."

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French continued, "And so, these larger pieces of context, I think, cast a pall on what should have been, by all rights, a very unifying thing: a celebration of 250 years of courage and sacrifice. And so, this is one of the problems you have when you have a man like Donald Trump as the president of the United States. He has tainted so many things with his corruption and so many things with this self-interest. It's very hard to pull any one thing out and say, 'Hey, look, this is purely a unifying American moment.' And that is what is such a shame about this era."

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