It was a parade, or as Trump first put it, a "perade," that didn't really go the way Trump wanted it.
Troops marched out of sync and so there were immediate rumors that all the troops did it to show their displeasure with Trump. Really. All of them? I watched several contingents and each one was out of step, but I didn't see anyone smiling. Indeed, they looked like they didn't want to be there.
Before the parade, Michael Wolff, journalist and author of several books on Trump, and the target of many Truth Social posts, said that, "... there's a big fear that nobody's going to turn out for this parade...So they're now trying to make sure that people get out. They're trying to bus in the Trump base."
"He's setting expectations for this, which is like, you know, there's going to be a million people. I mean, it's Trump numbers. So two things will happen. He'll be furious that the crowds are sparse, and then he'll announce that the crowds are unprecedented in size."
White House Communications Director Steven Cheung responded as you might imagine. "Michael Wolff is a lying sack of sh*t and has been proven to be a fraud. He routinely fabricates stories originating from his sick and warped imagination, only possible because he has a severe and debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted his peanut-sized brain."
After the parade, Wolff told the Daily Beast podcast that Trump wanted a menacing show of force and got a festive parade instead. "He's pissed off at the soldiers. He's accusing them of hamming it up, and by that, he seems to me they were having a good time, that they were waving, that they were enjoying themselves and showing a convivial face rather than a military face."
Then there were the soldiers marching out of sync. "He kind of reamed Hegseth out for this. Apparently, there was a phone call, and he said to Hegseth, the tone was all wrong. Why was the tone wrong? Who staged this? There was a tone problem. Trump, he keeps repeating himself. It didn't send the message that he wanted, which is that he's the Commander in Chief of this menacing enterprise."
What's confusing is the Hindustan Times has Cheung say his "sack of sh*t" and the rest in an article that was done before the parade, where the Daily Beast article is days after and he says the exact same thing. The Times even references the Daily Beast podcast.
Trump has called the parade a tremendous success, while it was completely overshadowed by the No Kings Day protests. Trump had said that protesters in DC would be met with a "big force." Protest organizers said that they were passing on doing one in DC, but there was one anyway. It was peaceful and the "big force" never arrived.
How Wolff would know about a phone call between Hegseth and Trump is suspect. Yes, a lot of leaks occur when other people are present. Maybe there was someone there if Trump called Hegseth and heard Trump's side of the conversation, which makes sense, because there's nothing from Hegseth's side.
If there was a phone call, it would, however, have gone as Wolff describes.
Trump's own appearance with slumping in his chair, tired look with eyes closed a lot, Melania appearing to fall asleep, Marco Rubio caught yawning along with a lot of Republicans in the viewing stand, showed just how low energy the whole affair was. The only time anything was different was when Trump stood up to salute the troops.
Steven Cheung has such a foul mouth for the position he has, but this was typical of his comments and nobody has ever called him out about it. He tried to spin the narrative on the parade and the No Kings Day protests with a complete disconnect from reality.
Not as evil looking as Stephen Miller, but still kinda weird.
The truth is that the only thing Trump was pleased with is that it didn't rain when it was 100% predicted. It did rain a bit at the beginning and then it was highly overcast and dreary.
If the Army wanted precision troops to mimic Russia and North Korea, they would have spent a lot of time on it. Obviously, they were more intent on the troops being in the parade without being the parade. It was after all, the Army's 250th anniversary. It wasn't supposed to be Trump's birthday parade. And you know what? It wasn't.
