“Our soldiers FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT, and they WIN, WIN, WIN,” President Trump said in his speech following the Washington parade celebrating the 250th anniversary of the US Army (and his 79th birthday).
About the Crowds – How many people took to the streets of Washington to watch the military parade celebrating the US Army’s 250th anniversary, and, um, coincidentally, President Trump’s 79th birthday, Saturday?
No estimates were immediately forthcoming. Perhaps whatever is left of the National Park Service was reluctant to make a 2017 inauguration-like guess.
Most of Trump’s cabinet was there, though few congressional Republicans showed up, The Hill reports.
The Army’s numbers included 6,600 soldiers, 150 military vehicles and 50 helicopters, according to Washingtonian magazine, which reports the crowd viewing all this “fell short of predictions, and at D.C.’s main counterprotest, the ratio of journalists to protestors was excessive.”
The Newsmax-esque pro-Trump Washington Examiner declared the gala a success, reporting that the parade turned out “thousands despite weather and nationwide protests.”
No Kings … But there was no organized No Kings anti-fascist protest planned for Washington, anyway. The New York Timesreports of big turnouts even in erstwhile pro-MAGA strongholds such as Dallas, three dozen rural areas in Indiana, where Trump won the 2024 election by 19 points, and Waukesha, Wisconsin, where “about 1,500 people marched through the streets in an area Mr. Trump had won with 59% of the vote.”
[See comments in the left column for anecdotes about protests in an erstwhile Republican stronghold and a small town in the Great Lakes region.]
The Independent cast a shadow of a doubt on Trump White House claims that 250,000 watched (it was telecast in its entirety on Fox News, by the way) while citing “experts” estimates that at least 4 million people attended No Kings protests across the nation, more than 1% of the US population.
Meanwhile, there were “empty bleachers” and “gaps in the crowd” according to The Indepndent, whose reporter, Richard Hall, described it as “something close to a medium-sized town’s July 4th celebration.”
Fatality … Arthur Folasa Ah Loo, 39, described as an “innocent bystander” in a Salt Lake City No Kings protest estimated at 10,000 marchers, was fatally shot Saturday evening after police officers shouted out “gunman” and “man with a rifle” at the march, The Salt Lake Tribune reports. Suspect in custody is Arturo Gamboa, 24.
Retribution? … About the time Trump was on his way to the Canadian Rockies in Alberta for the annual two-day Group of Seven Summit, he announced he had directed federal immigration officials to make deportations of undocumented immigrants from Democratic-run cities their priority, The Associated Press reports.
Officials “must expand efforts to detain and deport illegal aliens in America’s largest Cities, such as Los Angeles, Chicago and New York, where Millions upon Millions of Illegal Aliens reside,” Trump said Sunday in a social media post, in case all that extraneous capitalization didn’t give the outlet away.
Monday morning Trump was to hold his first meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney since their early May White House confab, The Globe and Mail reports, to “make progress” in resolving the “damaging” three-month trade war between the two countries.
Meanwhile … The Trump administration has told Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to “largely” pause its raids and arrests of allegedly undocumented aliens working in hotels, restaurants and in agriculture, according to an internal email obtained by The New York Times. [See Pundit-at-Large Stephen Macaulay’s “The Damage Is Being Dumb,” in the right column.]
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Arrest in Minnesota – Vance Boelter, 57, suspect in the fatal shooting of the state legislature’s House Democratic-Farmer-Leader Party leader Melissa Hoffman, and her husband Mark, and the wounding of State Sen. John A. Hoffman and his wife, Yvette in separate attacks early Saturday, was arrested just before 11 p.m. Central time Sunday night, Minnesota Public Radio reports. Police chief of Brooklyn Park, the suburb where the Hoffman’s were shot, Mark Bruley, called the manhunt for Boelter largest in state history.
Meanwhile, The Minneapolis Star Tribune is debunking online conspiracy theories that Gov. Tim Walz, Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris’ running mate last year, has “close ties” to the suspect. Rather, Walz reappointed Boelter to a bipartisan advisory board in 2019, but a friend of the suspect has called him a strong Trump supporter.
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--Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa