Consider This from NPR - What's the message behind Trump's military parade?

Episode Date: June 2, 2025

In the past, most military parades in the U.S. were staged to signal the end of a war and welcome home of those who fought. The last major military parade in the nation's capitol was in 1991. It marked the end of the Gulf War.The capital has not seen a military parade like the one planned by President Trump for June 14th in decades - a parade estimated to cost $45 million.NPR's Ari Shapiro speaks with historian Joshua Zeitz. He's a contributing editor for Politico Magazine and has written about where Trump's parade fits into the American tradition.For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

The debate about the military parade that President Trump has planned this month really boils down to one big question. Who and what is it for? Trump told NBC's Meet the Press that it was about celebrating the armed forces. We're going to have a big, beautiful parade. A military parade? Yeah, sure. Okay.

We're going to celebrate our military. What's the price tag? We have the greatest military in the world. People, peanuts compared to the value of doing it. The official occasion is the 250th anniversary of the establishment of the US Army, June 14th. That day also happens to be Trump's 79th birthday. Democratic Senator Adam Schiff of California

called it a vanity project in the model of would-be dictators around the world. This was in a post on social media last month. To use the military in this manner when Donald Trump is slashing veterans' benefits, to aggrandize himself to communicate to the country his control over the military is just another shameful act of this administration. There has been military hardware on the streets of D.C. before. Take President John F. Kennedy's

inaugural parade. Hit of the parade? A replica of a Navy PT boat, like that commanded by President Kennedy in the Pacific in World War II, with most of his crew on hand. It also featured dozens of missiles. And some 22,000 troops marched in Dwight D. Eisenhower's inaugural parade along with a cannon that could fire a nuclear warhead. But it's been more than 30 years since DC saw a parade like the one Trump is planning. Consider this, for over a century,

major US military parades have mostly marked victories. What's being celebrated on June 14th? From NPR, I'm Ari Shapiro. I'm Tanya Mosley, co-host of Fresh Air. At a time of sound bites and short attention spans, our show is all about the deep dive. We do long form interviews with people behind the best in film, books, TV, music, and journalism. Here our guests open up about their process and their lives in ways you've never heard before. Listen to the Fresh Air podcast from NPR and WHYY.

It's Consider This from NPR. Joshua Zeitz is a historian and a contributing editor for Politico Magazine, and he's written about where Trump's parade fits into the American tradition. We started our conversation with the last major military parade in D.C. to mark the end of the Gulf War in 1991. And even at the time, it was seen as being somewhat of a break with American tradition. There was a fairly heated debate within George H.W. Bush's administration as to whether it was appropriate. And ultimately the president determined that it would help

Americans get over the so-called Vietnam syndrome to be able to celebrate a victorious army. When the US has had military parades like that one, whether it was 1991 or stretching all the way back to the Civil War, you note that they marked military victories. That's exactly right. There's a long tradition in American history and certainly with the founding generation, which viewed with a lot of skepticism the idea that kings or parliament should keep permanent militaries long of so-called standing armies. And so the instances in which we did have large military parades, it came at the end of wars and it celebrated the demobilization of large armies.

So that would have been 1865 right after the Civil War, 1919 after World War I, 1945 after World War II. These never occurred during peacetime. But there are a couple of exceptions. John F. Kennedy, Dwight Eisenhower both had parades with troops and weaponry to mark their inaugurations. Even so, Trump is receiving criticism for this parade beyond the cost for the message it's sending. So what do you see as the problem with this parade

that the president has planned? The era is a good point. I mean, prior presidents have used military regalia to celebrate or mark other moments. There are obviously military ceremonies that happen, for instance, at Arlington National Cemetery on Memorial Day. There's a military presence at inaugurations, but that's very different from what we're doing here. This is something that you would expect to see in countries like North Korea or the old Soviet

Union or today's Russia, where strongmen effectively paraded their military and its equipment in an effort to intimidate perceived enemies abroad and at home. This feels much more like that than it does the large-scale military parades that occurred after the Civil War or World Wars I and II, not only celebrating a victory, but also marking the end of those large standing armies because they swiftly demobilized right after those parades. You say this is reminiscent of dictatorships, but Trump was apparently inspired by a Bastille

Day parade that he saw in France, which is a Western liberal democracy. If France can do it, why not the US? No, I mean, listen, there are other countries that are not part of that sort of access that do parades of this sort, but it's just sharply out of step with American history. Our country was born of a very particular opposition to state power, state authority, to standing armies, which could enforce that type of authority and power. And so even since the Cold War, with a large standing army intact, most presidents have shied away from these types of displays because they really run counter to the founding ideals. And it's hard to take this in isolation. One has to take it

in tandem with other measures that the president has taken to really vastly expand the authority, the powers, and the deference accorded to the presidency. He's really reinventing the presidency as something that doesn't resemble what it has traditionally in American history, and the military parade is part of that. We've been looking at some of the coverage of the parade that took place in 1991 at the end of the first Gulf War, and it's clear that it was very meaningful not just to troops who served in that war, but also to some Vietnam veterans. Here's a quote we found from a soldier named Captain Ben Clapsaddle. He was quoted in NPR's coverage.

Ben Clapsaddle – I grew up in the 60s and 70s. My father was a Vietnam veteran. The thousands of soldiers and service members that came home from that war didn't receive anything like this. I mean, this is a celebration for all the American people. The people who served in the last two wars that the US fought in Iraq and Afghanistan didn't get anything like this when those conflicts ended. And the Trump administration says this is about honoring all who served. What's wrong with having a parade like this to honor people who served in the military? It really depends on how this parade is organized and ultimately what the message is behind it. The fact that it's

being held on the president's birthday would suggest that this is less about them and more about him. I think that one can be forgiven for looking at this parade with a little bit of skepticism. Joshua Zeitz is a contributing editor for Politico magazine and author most recently of Lincoln's God, How Faith Transformed a president and a nation. Thank you very much. Thank you. This episode was produced by Connor Donovan. It was edited by Jeanette Woods.

Our executive producer is Sammy Yenigan. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Ari Shapiro.