The 250th Army anniversary military parade-slash-79th birthday celebration was the kind of patriotic (and self-promotional) spectacle that Donald Trump had longed for since early in his first administration. Back in 2017, after attending a Bastille Day parade on the Champs-Élysées, he reportedly told French president Emmanuel Macron that he would “try and top it” and hold a “really great parade to show our military strength.” But the Pentagon shot Trump down, with then defense secretary Jim Mattis saying he’d “rather swallow acid,” according to a book by Guy Snodgrass, his former speechwriter.
But in this second term, Trump has been emboldened and unfettered by any grown-ups in the room. Trump now gets the things that he wants, whether they help him and his administration or not. The president was seated on Saturday next to Pete Hegseth, the former Fox & Friends cohost now leading the Pentagon. Though the Trump White House suggested that “over 250,000 patriots” attended, the AP reported that the crowd “appeared to fall far short of early predictions that as many as 200,000 people would attend the festival and parade,” with the outlet also noting the “large gaps between viewers near the Washington Monument.” New York Times reporters “described an at-times underwhelming performance and crowds dispersing early amid a light drizzle.”
It was a real split screen moment for America, as millions of people participated in “No Kings” demonstrations across more than 2,100 cities and towns in all 50 states. Celebrities—one of Trump’s Achilles heels—were also out in force, including Kerry Washington, Glenn Close, Jimmy Kimmel, and Mark Ruffalo.
As data journalist G. Elliott Morris wrote, “There has been dramatically more protest activity against Trump in his second term compared to this point in his first term.” Looking at early data, he extrapolated that “roughly 4-6 million people protested Trump across the U.S. yesterday,” or “nearly 2%” of the US population. “Mobilized anti-Trump resistance is exceeding 2017 levels,” he added. Maybe Trump 1.0 officials who balked at holding a big military parade were actually doing Trump a favor, rather than dashing his dream because they weren’t sufficiently loyal or MAGA.
The “No Kings” organizers expressly didn’t want a big counterdemonstration in Washington, DC, which is something worth noting and considering in this age of distraction. “Instead of allowing this birthday parade to be the center of gravity, we will make action everywhere else the story of America that day,” they wrote.
In our fractured, fragmented information ecosystem, organizers need to focus on how to break through, how to permeate the discourse, and how to connect to everyday people. In this case, the answer was not to go at Trump on his turf, but to go around him, and to reveal the discontent with his administration in cities and towns both big and small. We’ve seen frustration with Trumpism in polls, but it’s even more dynamic to see it on the streets.
It was 10 years ago today that Trump came down the golden escalator, and while he’s still a dominant figure in our lives, he no longer commands the news cycle in the same way he once did. A decade of Trumpism has blunted the shock and awe of someone who continuously does the most inflammatory thing and then doubles down on it.
Pictures of Trump looking bored made the rounds online and stood in stark contrast to the aerial photos of tens of thousands of people in major cities, like Philadelphia, and crowds just about everywhere else, from Healy, Alaska, to Florence, Alabama. As millions marched in almost every pocket of America, there was a dark cloud that hung over all of it in the form of political violence.
Thousands of protesters flocked to the Minnesota State Capitol as police were searching for Vance Boelter, a reported Trump supporter and antiabortion activist suspected of killing Minnesota state representative Melissa Hortman and her husband, as well as wounding Democratic state senator John Hoffman and his wife; the latter two are expected to survive. Boelter is facing state and federal charges related to the shootings and killings, with Governor Tim Walz describing the latter as a “politically motivated assassination.” There were other acts of violence over the weekend too, as a man was accidentally shot and killed at a Salt Late City “No Kings” rally, while another man drove an SUV into a crowd in Culpeper, Virginia.
It’s hard not to think of the 1960s, an era of large-scale protests and political assassinations. But we’ve already seen horrific acts of political violence in recent years, from the hammer attack on Paul Pelosi to the arson fire at Josh Shapiro’s home to the plot to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer. Two Israeli Embassy staffers were killed last month in Washington; the man accused of the crime said he “did it for Palestine.” Trump, of course, was nearly assassinated last summer.
In this tumultuous time, the American people are standing up even if Republicans, who control the Senate and House, have rubber-stamped Trump’s Cabinet of deplorables and are signing on to a “big, beautiful bill” that targets Medicaid and food assistance while promising tens of billions more to ICE. The “No Kings” protests were a vivid illustration of an enraged electorate—and let’s hope Democratic leaders were paying attention. The public is clearly galvanized, and the party has an opportunity to harness that energy in taking back the House in 2026 and putting Trumpism in check.
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