President Trump’s decision to showcase a wide array of military hardware at the capital’s Fourth of July celebration has sparked a fierce dispute between those who argue he’s militarizing a national holiday and those who applaud what they call a patriotic celebration of the military.
Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser criticized the “Salute to America” event on the National Mall that Trump has been previewing for days, saying on Wednesday she hopes “that we never see the spectacle of our military force being on display as a show of force to our own people.”
At the center of the debate is a pair of M1 Abrams battle tanks on stationary display near the Lincoln Memorial on Independence Day. Trump’s event is also expected to include two M2 Bradley Fighting Vehicles, a former Air Force One plane, the new Marine One helicopter, and F-22 and F-35 fighter jets, as well as a demonstration from the Navy’s Blue Angels and flyovers by a stealth B-2 bomber. It will conclude with a massive fireworks display after a speech from the commander in chief himself.
[WATCH: Trump’s July Fourth celebration]
Trump reportedly got the idea for the “Salute to America” after attending a Bastille Day parade in Paris with French President Emmanuel Macron in 2017. The event featured a massive column of tanks, a flyover of French fighter jets streaming red, white, and blue smoke, and various soldiers, some of whom were dressed in historical garb and mounted on horseback.
Trump wanted to hold the event on Veteran’s Day or the Fourth of July in 2018, but an estimated price tag of $92 million put that plan on hold. As he continued to push for a parade, he ran into problems with officials in overwhelmingly Democratic D.C.
“The local politicians who run Washington, D.C. (poorly) know a windfall when they see it,” Trump said in an August tweet. “When asked to give us a price for holding a great celebratory military parade, they wanted a number so ridiculously high that I cancelled it. Never let someone hold you up!”
Bowser responded by saying that she was “the local politician who finally got thru to the reality star in the White House with the realities ($21.6M) of parades/events/demonstrations in Trump America (sad).”
The actual cost of the “Salute to America” remains to be seen, though the National Park Service reportedly diverted $2.5 million from other operations.
Former Marine Corps officer Dan Grazier said there are better uses for the money.
“It’s kind of hard to square spending $20 million on a military display for the Fourth of July with what I consider much more pressing needs of getting [one of] the Marine Corps’ premier bases put back in order after it was destroyed by the hurricane last year,” Grazier, who works at the Project on Government Oversight, told the Washington Examiner.
Hurricane Florence caused $3.7 billion of damage to Camp Lejeune when it hit the North Carolina coast in September. Marine Corps leaders have had trouble getting Congress to appropriate extra funds to clean up the extensive damage.
It’s not just the cost that has critics complaining. Some argue it is inappropriate to militarize a national holiday in a democratic country.
D.C. Democratic Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton said Wednesday that Trump had gone beyond politicizing the military and “now we’re going to militarize the entire” Fourth of July. Democratic Rep. Don Beyer, who represents a Northern Virginia district, also had harsh words for the president, saying in a statement that “the authoritarian-style trappings he demands, including tanks, will come at a great cost to taxpayers, and threaten significant harm to local roads and bridges.”
Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg said Wednesday the “Salute to America” parade “makes America look smaller.”
“We’ve always been the type of country that respects our military enough to not use them as props,” the South Bend, Indiana, mayor told CNN. “Trying to enlist people in uniform to decorate his political agenda just diminishes the military.”
Former Navy SEAL Brad Bailey disagreed with those who say Trump is militarizing the national holiday.
“We need to celebrate America more and get back to the patriotism that we’ve seen in the past,” Bailey told the Washington Examiner.
Bailey noted that the inclusion of the military could be a good marketing tool at a time recruitment is suffering. He recalled seeing the Navy “Leap Frogs” parachuting in Burlington, Iowa, as an 8 year old and said it inspired him to join their ranks.
“That stuff works,” Bailey said.
This is a photograph of President Eisenhower’s inaugural parade in 1953. #Tanks #Parade pic.twitter.com/2i7gtdA6cy
— Mike Glenn (@mrglenn) July 3, 2019
Trump’s inclusion of the military in national events is not without precedent. President Franklin Roosevelt’s 1941 inaugural parade featured a huge column of tanks parading outside the Capitol Building. President Dwight Eisenhower, who led the Allies to victory in Europe during World War II, had an entire column of tanks in his 1951 inaugural parade as well. President John Kennedy displayed massive missiles during his inauguration in 1961.
Trump is scheduled to speak at the “Salute to America” at 6:30 p.m. EDT. The White House gave the Pentagon 5,000 tickets to the event to distribute among staff and service members.
