President to kick off Veterans Day parade
WASHINGTON » President Donald Trump will speak at the opening ceremony of the New York City Veterans Day parade next week as he returns to a city he no longer calls home, organizers and the White House announced Wednesday.
United War Veterans Council Chairman Douglas McGowan said Trump will offer a tribute to veterans ahead of Monday’s 100th annual parade. While presidents have always been invited, McGowan said that, as far as he knows, Trump is the first to accept.
The announcement came just days after Trump said he has officially changed his residency from New York to Florida, where he owns several properties, including the Mar-a-Lago club, where he spends many winter weekends.
The Republican president was born in Queens and his brand has long been synonymous with the city. But he is deeply unpopular in the liberal bastion and has bashed New York’s politicians for treating him badly.
Trump did not serve in the military, receiving multiple deferments that allowed him to avoid the Vietnam War draft. That included a medical exemption for bone spurs in his heels — a convenient diagnosis that many have questioned. Nonetheless, Trump has been a longtime promoter of the parade.
During the 1990s, he pledged $200,000 and offered to raise money from friends in exchange for being named the parade’s grand marshal, The New York Times reported at the time. He also donated toward the creation of the city’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
“This is a day when we put politics aside to focus on honoring our veterans, and to re-commit ourselves as a community to providing them with the services they have earned, the services they deserve and, for many, the services they were denied,” McGowan said in a statement.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, who has often traded barbs with Trump, told reporters he hoped the president would attend the event with a recognition that it “is not about him, this is about our veterans. “It should not be politicized. It should not be turned into a spectacle.”