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President Trump held a military parade the same day that hundreds of protests took place, in what amounted to a split-screen show of force.
David E. Sanger has covered six American presidencies in four decades as a Times reporter in Washington and abroad.
June 14, 2025Updated 9:34 p.m. ET
President Trump presided over a show of American military might in the nation’s capital on Saturday evening, a celebration of the 250th anniversary of the United States Army that became a test of wills and competing imagery, with demonstrators around the country decrying his expansion of executive power.
Mr. Trump sat in a reviewing stand on Constitution Avenue as armored vehicles dating from two World Wars and overflights of 80-year old bombers and modern helicopters shook downtown Washington. The city was locked down, divided by a wall of tall, black crowd-control fences designed to assure that the parade, the first of its kind since American troops returned from the Gulf War in 1991, was an uninterrupted demonstration of history and American power.
It went off without a hitch, but also without even a nod to the current moment. When Mr. Trump left his seat between his wife, Melania Trump, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, it was to swear in new soldiers — “Have a great life,” he told them after the brief ceremony — and then, at sundown, to recall the Army’s greatest moments.
He invoked George Washington and recalled Gettysburg. Yet he spoke more to the Army’s power than to its purpose. “Time and again, America’s enemies have learned that you threaten the American people, soldiers are coming for you. Your defeat will be certain, your demise will be final, and your downfall will be total and complete.”
Hours before he left the White House, the day had already encapsulated the sharpness of America’s divide over immigration, free speech and Mr. Trump’s determination to reshape the government, universities and cultural institutions to adopt his worldview.
By design, military parades are part national celebration and part international intimidation, and Mr. Trump has wanted one in Washington since he attended a Bastille Day parade in Paris in 2017. Formally, the parade celebrates the decision by the Second Continental Congress on June 14, 1775, to raise a unified, lightly armed force of colonialists after the shock of the battles with British forces at Lexington and Concord. That army, which George Washington took command of a month later, ultimately expelled the far larger, better armed colonial force.
