When There are Troops on American Streets - 6/16/25
The 250th anniversary of the US Army is a legitimate cause for commemoration. So is the birthday of an American president, at least for his friends, family, and supporters. We learned last weekend why those two celebrations should probably not have been combined.
As we discussed here last week, Donald Trump is a master of distraction. When the conversation is going against him, he is extremely talented at changing the subject. Seven days ago, when we were still fascinated by his breakup with Elon Musk, Trump was redirecting our attention away from difficulties he was facing on budget negotiations, tariffs, and the war in Ukraine. But since then, the bad news has piled up, his need for new diversions has increased, and so the distractions have escalated. By this past weekend, video of a United States senator in handcuffs and a new war in the Middle East had both been decisively overshadowed in the eyes of most of Trump’s constituents.
The stakes began to grow the day after Musk’s departure, which was not playing favorably for Trump. The president knew that escalating a crackdown on Southern California’s unauthorized immigrant population and provoking a confrontation with state and local political leaders would refocus public and media attention in a much more favorable direction for him. Immigration and border policy are the only remaining policy matters on which the American people still give him positive approval ratings, and he quickly moved these issues back to center stage for most American voters.
As the week continued, the unrest grew. Some of the protestors engaged in violent behavior, burning cars and throwing rocks, bottles, and other projectiles at police officers, which prompted Trump to quickly call out the National Guard and then several hundred Marines. After a weeklong series of political, legal, and street battles, the nation’s attention was fully focused on the ongoing drama in Los Angeles and the subsequent protests that followed in several other cities around the country.
All of this was a prelude to this past Saturday, when the Army’s anniversary overlapped with Trump’s birthday, with predictably fractious results. The day could not possibly have started worse, with the politically motivated assassination of a Minnesota elected official and her husband. The weather forecast was foreboding as well, with violent thunderstorms predicted for the Washington area at the time of the military parade that Trump had ordered.
But when all was said and done, the parade had fairly little political impact. Unlike his more combative remarks earlier in the week, Trump stuck closely to the remarks that had been prepared for him, delivering a brief seven-minute speech in the monotone that he habitually employs when reading a script that does not excite him. The crowds were sizable but subdued, and even the weather—drizzles but no storms—did not meet expectations.
More than 2,000 protests took place across the country throughout the day, most (but not all) of which avoided violence. They were far more energized than the attendees at Trump’s Washington event but focused less on his parade than on his presidency. After more than six months of confused and conflicted messaging, the opposition appeared to find its voice on Saturday. Their challenge will be maintaining that visibility and focus, but they seemed to draw their motivation much less from the day’s festivities in Washington than from Trump’s conduct over the preceding week, most notably his decision to nationalize the guard over the objection of California leaders and deploy the Marines on the streets of the state’s largest city.
Trump held back from implementing the Insurrection Act, the 1807 law that allows the president to empower the military for domestic policing responsibilities. The Act is only to be used in cases of “civil disorder, insurrection and armed rebellion.” Despite the outbreaks of violence in Los Angeles throughout the week, nothing rose to those levels. But the sight of those troops, even in a more limited support capacity, was jarring—and lasting.
Honoring the men and women who serve in our nation’s military is a perfectly appropriate and laudable exercise, and Trump seemed to sense—or perhaps was told—that overtly politicizing the parade would have caused him significant political backlash. But the more dramatic scenes of US soldiers patrolling in downtown Los Angeles will leave uncomfortable memories long after the two birthday parties on the other side of the continent have been forgotten.