Donald Trump held a birthday celebration for himself under the guise of the birthday of the American Army. I had feared this day, felt intuitively that it was going to be, perhaps, one of the most important days in American history for one of two opposite reasons; either the beginning of America’s first dictator demonstrating the awesome power of his military, or the beginning of America waking up to the fact that we had elected an enemy to our constitution
On this same day, millions of Americans took to the streets in “No Kings” demonstrations all over the United States as a counter-message to Donald Trump’s authority. This signified a ray of hope and was necessary because of Trump’s repeated violations of constitutional restraints on the Executive Branch. His recent speeches at both West Point and Fort Bragg were so inappropriate, so unprecedented, so political and partisan and factually vacant, that the upcoming military parade in Washington conjured up visions of Trump in the reviewing stand gleaming as the tanks rolled by and the Black Hawks roared, and the troops marched in lock-step over the hallowed ground of our Capitol. I was remembering the footage of Hitler riding down the Champs-Élysées toward the Arc de Triomphe with a look on his face that said, “This is the finest moment of my life.”
In that respect, it was a nothing burger.
For the first time, perhaps in his life, Trump played it more by-the-book and allowed the Army to have a birthday celebration and put himself second. Oh, don’t get me wrong, it was still more of a staged production than a military parade, with musical performers, each speaker praising the birthday boy and his leadership, and surreal reminders of the event sponsors, like Lockheed Martin, lest we think we were witnessing a military parade at one of our service academies.
The president’s speech, at the end of the evening, was lacking in bombast, self-praise, and the usual litany of lies to which we’re accustomed. Every President has a speech writer, but I have never heard a speech so obviously and totally constructed by someone else – not so much the plethora of historical facts to which he has never shown a previous shred of knowledge, but more the hypocrisy of praising the bravery and self-sacrifice of our finest warriors while having a history of personally trashing some of America’s greatest heroes – most notably, Senator John McCain, a POW tortured for over five years in Vietnam, and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Mark Milley, who Trump has called a traitor and suggested punishment by death.
In his farewell address at West Point, General Milley said that we don’t take an oath to a King or a queen or a dictator or a wannabe dictator; we take an oath to the Constitution of the United States of America. The Army motto, “This We’ll Defend” refers to the Constitution, the only thing we swear to defend as members of the military, and the only oath taken by the president of the United States. Recently, a reporter (pointing to a copy of the Declaration of Independence on the wall of the Oval Office) asked Trump what The Declaration means to him. Trump said that it was a “declaration of unity and love and respect.” He seemed unaware of our declaration to separate from King George, unaware that June 14 is the birthday of an Army mustered to fight the tyranny of that king; ironically, also the birthday of the first president who craves the power of a king; a man who posts pictures of himself with a crown on his head, or in Pontiff’s robes, sitting on a throne and pointing to heaven.
Donald Trump does not keep his ambitions, beliefs and crimes secret. When neo-Nazis marched in Charlottesville with torches chanting, “Jews will not replace us,” Trump was sympathetic to their cause – a Unite the Right rally that summoned all to come “If you want to defend the South and Western civilization from the Jew and his dark-skinned allies.” Trump looked at the violence and said there were fine people on both sides. This week he rewarded some of those fine people by announcing that he would re-name seven military bases after Confederate Generals, including Robert E. Lee, whose statue removal triggered the violence in Charlottesville. In his first presidential debate with Joe Biden, he asked the Proud Boys to stand back and stand by, and then he summoned them to Washington where their Confederate Flags breached our Capitol in another day of violence. His response? “We love you.”
He loved them because they were his army. He could not love John McCain, a Navy pilot who fought for this nation, suffered as a prisoner of war, and served admirably in the United States Senate; but he could love Navy Seal, Eddie Gallagher, convicted of war crimes, pardoned by Trump, and brought to Mar a Lago to be hailed as a great warrior. He could love and pardon those convicted of seditious conspiracy in the January 6th Insurrection and all those who brutalized law enforcement for hours while the president watched on television and joked about the possible lynching of a disloyal vice president – disloyal to him, but loyal to the Constitution.
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Donald Trump told us that he “fell in love” with Kim Jong Un, a dictator cited by the United Nations for multiple crimes against humanity. He praises Vladimir Putin who has murdered tens of thousands of Ukrainians, and he admires Prince Salmon, who had a journalist tortured and dismembered. This is a house divided that cannot stand – the first Commander in Chief that makes a mockery of the very mission of the military he commands. We celebrated the birthday of an Army under the leadership of a man who admires our enemies and betrays the very reason for the Army’s existence. Donald Trump sat in review of troops willing to give life and limb to defend inalienable rights while he openly admires leaders who crush those very “inalienable” rights in order to stay in power. If you put this into a Hollywood script it would never be believed.
Joe Biden told us that what America had to offer the world was not the example of our power but the power of our example – the power embodied in the Geneva Conventions that Donald Trump thinks “tie our hands,” in NATO that Trump says “is obsolete.” The American example that has reached out to the world through the United Nations, the World Health Organization, USAID, The World Bank, International Climate Change organizations, etc. But Trump believes in the isolationism and nationalism that are signatures of our enemies, and have led to instability, division, external or civil war, and destruction.
Our first Continental Congress failed to establish an Army. Our founders were fearful that an Army under the control of one man could be used against the people for personal ambition. George Washington had the same fears and when he resigned his commission, stepping away from power, he gave perhaps the greatest gift to humanity in recorded history. It is now up to WE THE PEOPLE not to betray Washington’s legacy by accepting a Commander in Chief who told his base just last summer that if they vote for him, “in four years, you don’t have to vote again.”
No more kings, indeed.
