Trump blames D.C. for raining on military parade
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s grand vision for a military parade down Pennsylvania Avenue collapsed Friday, as he backed off plans to stage a costly event this fall that was never enthusiastically embraced by the Pentagon or leaders of the city expected to host the spectacle.
In a series of tweets, Trump blamed local officials in Washington, alleging without evidence that they had inflated the cost to the city of a display of America’s armed forces that had been inspired by Trump’s visit last year to a Bastille Day parade in Paris.
“The local politicians who run Washington, D.C. (poorly) know a windfall when they see it,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “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.”
Trump said it was possible the parade could be put on next year if the cost “comes WAY DOWN” and added that with the savings “we can buy some more jet fighters!”
He said he would go to a parade in Paris to mark Armistice Day on Nov. 11 and also attend a “big parade” at Joint Base Andrews.
His tweets were a confirmation of what the Pentagon had signaled a day before: that the planned Nov. 10 event might be postponed amid questions about its escalating costs, which were estimated to be as high as $92 million.
Trump has been pushing for a parade publicly and privately since he visited Paris in July 2017 and was deeply impressed by the Bastille Day celebration he attended as a guest of French President Emmanuel Macron. The grandiosity of the event included uniformed French
troops marching down Avenue des Champs-Élysées, military tanks, armored vehicles and fighter jets flying over the Arc de Triomphe.
Trump’s plan immediately ran into concerns over its potential cost and whether the city streets of Washington could withstand the type of heavy military machinery that the president witnessed rolling through Paris. But Trump continued to embrace the idea and administration officials trudged ahead with the planning in recent months.
White House Chief of Staff John Kelly briefed Trump earlier this week on the growing cost of the event and several logistical concerns in an effort to discourage him from holding the parade, according to a senior administration official. He also told the president that if the parade occurred in Washington in November he would not be able to attend the event in Paris with other world leaders scheduled to be held at the same time to celebrate the centennial of the end of World War I.
Kelly presented Trump with the option he tweeted out Friday morning: Scrap the parade and go to Paris as well as a separate event at Joint Base Andrews.
The event at Andrews has not been publicly announced and the base does not typically have a large military parade, but does host an air show each year with large displays of military might. The next air show will be held in May 2019.
Administration officials, including Kelly and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, were not supportive of the parade even as they explored the idea for the president, according to the official.
“One person, really, in the White House loved the idea of the parade,” the official said referring to Trump, adding that the president did not express anger at anyone over the event’s demise.
Trump still wants the parade to happen in 2019, a second senior administration official said, noting that he talked about the splendor of the Paris spectacle for weeks after returning from France last year.
District leaders on Friday pushed back at Trump’s attempt to blame them, detailing their efforts to deal with what they characterized as a disorganized effort on behalf of the administration.
About an hour after the president’s tweet, District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, delivered her own caustic response on Twitter, indicating the desired parade would have cost $21.6 million to organize in the nation’s capital. The federal government typically reimburses the District for a large share of the security and logistical costs for such events.
“Yup, I’m Muriel Bowser, mayor of Washington DC, 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),” Bowser tweeted.
Local politicians in overwhelmingly Democratic Washington — where just 4 percent of registered voters cast a ballot for Trump — have been cool to the idea of a military parade since it was floated earlier this year.
Bowser said in an interview that she found Trump’s accusation that District officials were trying to exaggerate the city’s security and logistical costs galling, especially since the city had been working to plan the event with little lead time.
“The notion that we would overstate what it takes to properly have a parade or demonstration, especially on this short notice, for some benefit to the city — it was just outrageous,” Bowser said. “It’s pretty clear that the president is upset about the parade, and it appears that he didn’t want to take on his own agencies … or the Pentagon, so he decided that we were a good target.”
The White House first confirmed Trump’s interest in a large-scale parade in February. But it was only on Aug. 8 that Bowser received a letter from Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen saying the event would take place “on or about Nov. 10, 2018” and discussing the need for planning and coordination with city agencies.