Trump Insists Military Parade Was a 'Tremendous Success' Despite Millions More Attending 'No Kings' Protests
President Donald Trump reiterated the success of his military parade, which coincided with his birthday last weekend, despite the fact that the event was overshadowed by protests denouncing his administration across the nation.
Trump paused to speak to journalists Sunday while en route Canada for the G7 summit, commenting on the parade held to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army.
"Last night was a tremendous success with a fantastic audience," Trump told reporters. "It was supposed to rain, they gave it a 100% chance of rain and it didn't rain at all. It was beautiful."
The parade, which was held on June 14, coincided with the president's birthday.
"And so I asked, if they gave it a 100% chance, right? 100% it was going to rain like crazy—and it didn't rain at all—how do they predict 100 years out? And 50 years out or 200 years out?" he continued. "They didn't do too well the weather people last night, but it was beautiful."
"Amazing. Despite the threat of rain, over 250,000 patriots showed up to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the @USArmy. God Bless the USA!" said White House Communications Director Steven Cheung after the parade began.
However, while accurate attendee numbers are yet to be released, many believe that the actual crowd size was much smaller than what Cheung and other White House officials have alleged it was.
"Just the eye of any individual who is here on the ground or looking at images or video knows that there were not 250,000 people," reporter Vaughn Hillyard, who attended the parade, told the hosts of MSNBC's "The Weekend" on Sunday.
The parade's overall attendance was much smaller than the nationwide "No Kings" protests, which were explicitly anti-Trump. The demonstrations garnered an estimated attendance of 4 to 6 million, according to data journalist G. Elliot Morris, making them potentially some of the largest demonstrations in US history.
"Based on hundreds of crowd-sourced records of No Kings Day event turnout, and extrapolating for the cities where we don't have data yet, it looks like roughly 4-6m people protested Trump across the U.S. yesterday. Mobilized anti-Trump resistance is exceeding 2017 levels," Morris said on X.
Originally published on Latin Times
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