Trump's Parade

According to the New York Times “The current plan involves a tremendous scene in the center of Washington: 28 M1A1 Abrams tanks (at 70 tons each for the heaviest in service); 28 Stryker armored personnel carriers; more than 100 other vehicles; a World War II-era B-25 bomber; 6,700 soldiers; 50 helicopters; 34 horses; two mules; and a dog.” Along with fly-overs, bands and reenactors. The cost is estimated to be 45 million dollars, not including the cost to clean up and repair any damage to the streets of Washington, D.C. done by 70 ton Abrams tanks. The scheduled date for the parade on June 14, 2025, a date that strangely enough coincides with Trump’s birthday.

This reminds me of an old Red Buttons line “and for this, he got a dinner.”

Trump joins a list of autocratic, self-indulgent world leaders who aggrandized themselves with a parade on their birthdays:

• Adolph Hitler, April 20

• Joseph Stalin

• Saddam Hussein, April 28

• Kim Jon Un

• Mao Zedong

• Augusto Pinochet

• Benito Mussolini

Parades like these are characteristic of autocratic regimes and, generally, have been avoided by countries who pride themselves on being democracies.

That avoidance has apparently ended in the United States.

But even more important than how it appears to the rest of the world is the fact that this very same president has cut funding for medical research grants, Medicaid, public education, preventing gun violence programs, veterans services, mental health, the environment, castrated Congress and has waged war on this country’s major private universities.

But no joke folks, while he flatters himself publicly (on the taxpayer’s expense) he also adds to his personal wealth by making major investments in bitcoin, selling his own coins, charging sycophants for dinners with him, Truth Social, Trump World Tower, Saudi funded LIV Golf League, real estate developments in Oman, Saudi Arabia and UAE and the gift of a $400 million plane ignoring an emolument clause in the Constitution.

FTS