President Donald Trump’s 79th birthday, on June 14, coincides with the 250th anniversary of the US Army and, according to reporting from The New York Times on Friday, a large-scale military parade is being planned for that day in the streets of Washington, DC.
This parade, one of several events set to commemorate the anniversary, is set to include 150 vehicles, 50 aircraft, and participation from 6,600 soldiers.
The Friday reporting comes after the White House, last month, denied that such a military parade was planned on the president’s birthday. The Army has held in statements that the procession is meant to celebrate the anniversary of the military branch’s founding on June 14, 1775. Reporting from the Associated Press on Thursday, based on unreleased planning documents, confirmed that a parade was in the works.
Donald Trump has long wanted a parade illustrating the might of the Department of Defense—which currently touts a budget of over $841 billion. Ahead of his first inauguration in 2017, Trump told a Washington Post reporter that Americans may see the military “marching down Pennsylvania Avenue.” Months later, he told a Times reporter that he had “always thought” of doing such a parade.
When the numbers were run in 2018, the Pentagon estimated that it would cost as much as $92 million to pay for the troops, fighter jets, armored vehicles, and other military hardware to meet Trump’s parade desires. When asked last month about the potential of the Army parade, Washington mayor Muriel Bowser expressed concerns about the costs and the potential damage to the city’s streets from heavy combat vehicles.
“If military tanks were used, they should be accompanied with many millions of dollars to repair the roads,” she said.
The current, ongoing planning for June comes as Trump is hoping to rework how we celebrate veterans.
In a Truth Social post on Thursday, the president said he was “hereby renaming May 8th as Victory Day for World War II” and planned to change Veterans Day in November to “Victory Day for World War I.” Poland and France celebrate Victory Day on May 8, while Russia celebrates it on May 9.
“We won both Wars, nobody was close to us in terms of strength, bravery, or military brilliance, but we never celebrate anything,” Trump wrote in a late-night post. “We are going to start celebrating our victories again!”
If Trump follows through on renaming Veterans Day, which has formally existed since 1954, most living veterans would no longer have a holiday commemorating their service. There are currently no surviving veterans of World War I and, this year, the Department of Veterans Affairs estimated that about 66,000 American World War II veterans were alive. According to the 2023 census, 15.8 million veterans live in America, meaning that more than 99 percent of living veterans—including millions who were enlisted in the Gulf War era—would be left out of Trump’s proposed changes.
