Some retired and active-duty military officers said the participation of the military in Trump’s “Salute to America” event on the 4th of July appears to politicize the armed forces on a day when the U.S. toasts its independence in a nonpartisan environment.
Perhaps this is what happens when there is only an acting Secretary of Defense, acting Homeland Security Director, an acting Chief of Staff.
Our July 4th Salute to America at the Lincoln Memorial is looking to be really big. It will be the show of a lifetime!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 3, 2019
Washington Prepares for a July 4 Spectacle, Starring and Produced by President Trump
“Put troops out there so we can thank them — leave tanks for Red Square,” said Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, a retired four-star Marine general and former head of United States Central Command, who until this year served in the Trump administration as a special envoy to help resolve disputes in the Persian Gulf.
Muriel Bowser, Washington’s mayor, said displaying tanks and heavy equipment was “not the American way” of honoring the military.
George Washington Would Hate Trump’s July 4 Parade
The men and women who fought in the American Revolution despised pageantry and personality cults. By T.H. Breen, a professor at large at the University of Vermont, and the author of the forthcoming “The Will of the People: The Revolutionary Birth of America.”
“As Capt. Joseph Bloomfield explained to a company of New Jersey troops preparing to fight in the Revolutionary War, the American states had ‘entered a new era of politics.’ He warned the soldiers to be on guard against the rise of an ‘aspiring Demagogue, possessed of popular talents and shining qualities, a Julius Caesar, or an Oliver Cromwell’ who ‘will lay violent hands on the government and sacrifice the liberties of his country.’“
The Founding Fathers would be ashamed of Donald Trump’s egocentric, militaristic July 4th by Patti Davis, Ronald Reagan’s daughter.
Trump is hijacking a holiday that was purely patriotic and nonpartisan until now. The big issue when my dad was president was a Beach Boys performance.
When I was very young — 6 or 7 is my memory — my parents thought it would be a fun idea to take me to the Hollywood Bowl for the fireworks show on July Fourth. I remember the car ride at sunset, sitting in the back seat with the window down and a warm breeze blowing across me. And then I remember sitting in a hard chair very close to the main floor when suddenly the world in front of me erupted into fiery shards and huge arching shapes.