Weather, war and protests threaten to rain on Trump’s military parade

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s military parade here on Saturday — a celebration of the Army’s 250th birthday that happens to coincide with the commander in chief’s 79th birthday — comes at a time when American forces are supporting domestic deportation efforts and Israel’s defense against Iranian missiles.

The first such parade since Washington welcomed victorious U.S. troops home from the first Gulf War in 1991 — and an echo of similar extravaganzas following the Civil War and World Wars I and II — Saturday’s affair will feature more than 6,000 troops, a procession of various types of armored vehicles alongside the National Mall on Constitution Avenue, and dozens of military aircraft cruising overhead.

Trump, who relishes pomp, will have his own reviewing stand.

But he runs the risk, literally and metaphorically, of watching rain drench his parade. Weather forecasts show a significant chance of precipitation and the possibility of evening thunderstorms. More substantively, the demonstrative show of American force will play out against the backdrop of Trump’s inability to leverage U.S. power to fulfill campaign promises to end wars in Ukraine and Gaza.

In a twist of timing, the long-planned exercises come the day after the U.S. began providing aid to Israel in shooting down Iranian missiles and days after Trump deployed National Guard and Marine troops to southern California to quell protests against immigration raids.

Military parades have a long history in the United States, both at the national level and in local communities, said Barbara Perry, a presidential historian at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center.

“Humans are drawn to pageantry,” Perry said, but she noted a difference between traditional military expositions and Trump’s birthday version.

“It’s usually about the personnel,” she said. “Now we know that this president has political issues all around the world, and wanting to show off the might. And if he views it, as in his first term, ‘his generals,’ and, if he views it as ‘his military,’ then you tie it to your personal special day of your birthday — that’s what’s different.”

Trump critics say he is exploiting the military to nurture his own ego — at a cost of as much as $45 million to taxpayers — and, as he claims sweeping executive powers, presenting himself in the manner of a dictator. For decades, Americans have associated heavily armed military parades with Cold War-era authoritarianism in the former Soviet Union and other countries.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., also made that comparison this week and said he didn’t think the parade was the best idea.

“I wouldn’t have done it,” Paul said Tuesday. “The images you saw in the Soviet Union and North Korea, we were proud not to be that.”

That may help explain why most American adults are sour on the idea. New NBC News Decision Desk polling, released Saturday morning, shows that 64% of adults surveyed say they disapprove of the parade. Protests are planned in Washington and across the country, organized under the slogan “No kings.”

Trump, who promised to meet protesters with “very big force,” has sought to rebut the notion that he is celebrating himself.

“It will be a parade like we haven’t had in many, many decades here,” he said this week. “And it’s a celebration of our country. It’s a celebration of the Army, actually.”

Democratic lawmakers pushed back on Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who was on Capitol Hill for a round of hearings this week, over their choices in how to use the military.

“You are deploying the American military to police the American people. Sending the National Guard into California without the governor’s request. Sending the Marines — not after foreign threats, but after American protesters,” Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, told Hegseth.

“And now President Trump is promising heavy force against peaceful protesters at his D.C. military parade,” she said. “Those sorts of actions, and that sort of rhetoric from the president, should stop every one of us cold. Threatening to use our own troops — on our own citizens — at such scale is unprecedented, it is unconstitutional, and it is downright un-American.”

Ken Carodine, a retired Navy rear admiral, said in a telephone…