It’s an OK idea … but way too expensive.
A new poll has found that a majority of Americans don’t think the massive military parade that President Donald Trump has ordered up for his 79th birthday on Saturday is a good use of taxpayer dollars, even as most adults either approve of the parade itself or have no opinion of the plan.
An Associated Press and NORC survey of 1,158 adults across all 50 U.S. states asked respondents whether they believe the parade, which is ostensibly meant to mark the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army, is “a good use of government funds” or “not a good use of government funds.”
According to results published on Thursday, a full 60 percent of respondents said they agreed with the latter statement that the parade — the first military parade in Washington since a victory parade held after Operation Desert Storm in 1991 — was “not a good use” of money collected from taxpayers.
Just 38 percent said the parade was a good use of funds.
But when asked whether they approve, disapprove, or have no opinion of the parade itself, respondents were far more accepting of Trump’s plan.
Roughly four in 10 Americans said they either somewhat or strongly approve of the parade compared with 29 percent who said they somewhat or strongly disapprove of it.
Approximately 31 percent of respondents said they neither approve or disapprove of the parade plans, which will include a fireworks display and performance by Army parachutists.
The parade is expected to require spending somewhere between $25 million and $45 million, including a significant portion that will be spent after the parade to repair damage caused to D.C. roads by the numerous tanks expected to roll through the streets in a scene reminiscent of the annual Victory Day parade held in Moscow’s Red Square, an Army spokesman said.
Trump has pushed for the U.S. military to parade through the streets of Washington with tanks and missile launchers since he returned from a state visit to France early in his first term. During that July 2017 trip, the president saw the annual Bastille Day parade in Paris and wanted to replicate the martial display in the nation’s capital, complete with Abrams battle tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles.
But the military leadership in place during his first term balked at the idea because it’s not something that is part of the American military tradition. Pentagon brass eventually permitted some static displays of tanks and other heavy for Independence Day celebrations on the National Mall in 2019, where they served as part of a backdrop for Trump to deliver a speech in which he credited the Continental Army — the forerunner to the U.S. Army founded during the American Revolutionary War — with having “took over the airports” from the British.
The bizarre remark drew ridicule from historians, who correctly noted that were no airports for either side to control during that conflict because powered flight would not be invented until 1904.
At least one Republican senator, Rand Paul of Kentucky, has spoken out against the parade plans, telling NBC News this week that he had never supported “goose-stepping soldiers and big tanks and missiles rolling down the street,” and he “wouldn’t have done it.”
“I’m not sure what the actual expense of it is, but I’m not really, you know, we were always different than, you know, the images you saw in the Soviet Union and North Korea. We were proud not to be that,” Paul said.
For his part, Trump has downplayed the cost of the parade, telling NBC News last month that the expenditure is “peanuts compared to the value of doing it.”
“We have the greatest missiles in the world. We have the greatest submarines in the world. We have the greatest army tanks in the world. We have the greatest weapons in the world. And we’re going to celebrate it,” he added.
The parade is expected to include as many as 6,000 soldiers from National Guard, the Army Reserve, Special Operations Command, West Point and Reserve Officers’ Training Corps elements, as well as 50 aircraft, 150 vehicles — including tanks, Bradley Fighting Vehicles, HIMARS launchers — plus 34 horses, two mules and a dog.
