Donald Trump’s plan for a military parade on June 14, 2025, formally to have fun the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army as well as coinciding with the president’s 79th birthday, is yet one more indication of his affinity for authoritarian leaders and regimes.
Though the parade, which is able to embrace 6,000 soldiers, 150 military vehicles and 50 helicopters − and can temporarily close Reagan National Airport and price greater than US$45 million − is ostensibly to have fun the navy, the idea is pure Trump.
When pressed about his need for the parade, the president has defined his reasoning for having the parade.
“We had extra to do with successful World Warfare II than another nation. Why don’t we have now a Victory Day? So we’re going to have a Victory Day for World War I and for World War II.”
Whereas big military parades in Washington, D.C., other than immediately following a major military victory, are largely with out precedent, there’s one other American metropolis that has a a lot richer custom of parades. That metropolis is New York.
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Trump vs. NYC
New York is a parade city. It’s additionally a metropolis with which Trump has an extended, complicated relationship.
Trump was born in New York and started his enterprise profession there. Earlier than Trump was a politician, or perhaps a actuality TV star, he was a fixture in the New York tabloids. His marriages, divorces, courting life and enterprise successes and failures had been splashed throughout extra headlines than will be simply counted starting within the early Eighties, however Trump was at all times introduced as a clownish figure, albeit a very rich one.
In these years, persevering with into the primary decade of this century, the native media at all times introduced him as gaudy, loud and never fairly as enterprise savvy as he claimed – hence the coverage of his bankruptcies.
Whereas a lot of the remainder of the nation purchased the Trump narrative that he was an excellent businessman surrounded by stunning girls, doting workers and fawning celebrities, many New Yorkers never did.
New Yorkers, together with me, remembered an earlier Trump who virtually ran the family business into the ground over many years. Nonetheless, New York has at all times been essential to Trump. Though he nonetheless is a well-done steak with ketchup kind of guy, whereas New York is a soup dumplings, or bagels and lox, or arroz con pollo, and even caviar kind of town, Trump nonetheless has a connection to this metropolis and needs to be celebrated right here.
Politicians, heroes and ticker tape
And the city celebrates with big parades honoring every thing from sports activities championships, which was once rather more widespread for New York groups, to the U.S. successful wars, most lately following the primary Gulf Warfare in 1991. Moreover, New York has parades for most of the lots of of ethnic teams that make up town.
For decades on Thanksgiving Day, as they roast their turkey, put together the stuffing and finalize preparations for the normal feast, tens of millions of People have watched the Thanksgiving parade, which is at all times held in Manhattan, regularly known as the Macy’s Day parade as a result of Macy’s has lengthy sponsored the occasion.
In lots of New York Metropolis’s legendary parades, together with those celebrating LGBTQ+ pride, the Puerto Rican Day Parade, St. Patrick’s Day, West Indian American Day and others, politicians march, often in the lead, alongside their constituents.
Some, just like the Thanksgiving parade, have their very own rituals, akin to watching the balloons being inflated behind the American Museum of Pure Historical past on the night earlier than Thanksgiving.
Nevertheless, probably the most well-known of all parade sorts in New York is the ticker-tape parade. Relationship from the times when paper, not computer systems, dominated buying and selling flooring and places of work, folks would throw ticker tape and different papers out their home windows because the parade handed by means of the Monetary District space that grew to become referred to as the Canyon of Heroes.
Not all New York parades are the identical. Some, just like the Thanksgiving parade, are merely enjoyable and celebratory. Ticker-tape parades honor people or teams that have accomplished something significant, like landing on the Moon or winning the Super Bowl. They’ll acknowledge essential foreign guests and dignitaries, whereas different parades have fun the contributions of varied peoples or teams of New Yorkers.
However New Yorkers by no means throw parades for his or her politicians and have a tendency to favor drums and floats moderately than tanks and troopers at these occasions.
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No ticker tape for Trump
Whereas there are parades for all types of individuals and occasions in New York, there has by no means been a parade there for Donald Trump. There was a fairly large street party in the city when it was introduced that Trump had misplaced the 2020 election.
Though Trump modified his major residence to Florida in 2019, Trump was a New Yorker for a few years and like many longtime residents had the prospect to see many heroes – Mickey Mantle, John Glenn, Tom Seaver, Derek Jeter, Eli Manning, Nelson Mandela, American struggle veterans, quite a few overseas leaders and lots of others – feted with a parade down the Canyon of Heroes. Jeter was celebrated 5 occasions, John Glenn and Mickey Mantle twice.
It’s unimaginable to know Trump’s motivations for pushing the parade within the nation’s capital. However we additionally know that he’s a person who holds himself in excessive regard and craves consideration. Trump will possible by no means get a parade in his erstwhile hometown, so Washington should be the following neatest thing.
Trump’s newfound parade fetish underscores his love-hate relationship with New York.
New York is town that made him well-known and made his household, primarily due to his father’s work, very wealthy. Additionally it is town that has repeatedly rejected Trump. It’s the house of a few of his worst real estate deals, the place the place the enterprise neighborhood misplaced endurance along with his antics and unwillingness to pay contractors, and the place three times the voters turned out in huge numbers towards him.
A Washington, D.C., parade celebrating an unappreciated New Yorker who years in the past decamped to Florida and Washington is a pale imitation of the Canyon of Heroes, the place New Yorkers honor beloved leaders, struggle heroes, explorers and their favourite sports activities stars. However it’s all Trump has.
