‘Truly Low Energy’: Political Event Organizer Says Many Attendees Left Trump’s Military Parade Before President’s Speech, Reveals It Was a $45-Million Mess
Donald Trump’s $45 million military birthday parade on June 14 turned into a logistical mess, according to a prominent D.C. event organizer who was on the ground at the event. What was supposed to be a crowning moment for the birthday boy and a grand celebration of the U.S. Army’s 250th anniversary was a planning disaster, he claims.
You may have seen the photos on social media of Trump appearing visibly bored and nearly nodding off during his 79th birthday bash, but that was just the beginning, said political event producer Doug Landry, who has helped orchestrate major events for four presidential campaigns. In a viral thread on X, Landry detailed a setup that was rife with problems.
The June 14 festivities featured a grand military parade through Washington, D.C. About 6,600 troops and 150 military vehicles rolled down the route from the Pentagon to the National Mall, and 50 aircraft, including Black Hawk and Apache helicopters, flew overhead. But visitors apparently had a less-than-stellar time experiencing it.
With a budget of $24 million to $45 million of taxpayer dollars, the government intended to pull out all the stops but clearly forgot a few things.
Getting in: Somehow, 15,000 people were funneled into one ten-foot-wide entrance to access a checkpoint on the National Mall, trapping masses of people on Constitution Avenue, said Landry. Meanwhile, “dozens” of other checkpoints nearby stood completely empty. The crowd was then funneled up a stairway to a bridge that spanned the parade route, causing more bottlenecks and another headache when it was time to leave:
“SURELY this won’t be a problem when the 100,000 people who loaded the event space over the course of four hours all try to leave at once, right? (this is called foreshadowing),” Landry said sarcastically.
Once inside the security zone, “The vibes from the crowd were truly low energy. The whole parade was this: green vehicle after green vehicle. Not many bands. Not much variety. Single file. Lots of space between each thing,” Landry remarked.
Perhaps the vibes were low because some parade-goers had to watch tanks cruise by from behind 8-foot-tall chain link fences that were covered in legal warnings, urging “Restricted Area, Do Not Enter.” Yet, in other parts of the route, anti-Trump protestors managed to plaster posters on lamp posts proclaiming “No Kings Since 1776,” providing some ironic photo opportunities.
Landry noted that many attendees left before Trump’s scheduled speech, after listening to “classic rock instrumental covers” blaring from the festival stage. But in his professional opinion, the empty VIP bleachers were the most egregious planning snafu of all:
“This is the unforgivable crowd sin though. Same as my first post in this thread. These are VIP bleachers on the north side of constitution (closer to the WH than the main crowd) And they are EMPTY. We are talkin’ Trump 1.0 inauguration empty. Someone f**ked up here.”
For the non-VIP crowd, a Jumbotron was set up near the festival stage, displaying a live feed of the parade, but it suffered a malfunction with the screen partially blacked out.
The veteran event organizer also documented overflowing trash cans, giant water dispensers, but no cups to drink from, and even sneaked a shot of a hidden stash of bottled water that he said was not being distributed.
Trump’s birthday corresponds to the official founding of the Army in 1775, and also Flag Day, a commemoration of the day in 1777 when the Continental Congress decided what the official American flag would look like. The president initially wanted to have the military parade in his first term, but the idea was abandoned due to the extreme cost, reported NPR. Having it now, however, seems like an even worse time. With a proposed 8 percent cut in military spending over the next five years — among all the other slashes to the federal government — it’s no wonder the idea was widely slammed.
But as Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll explained during a House Armed Services Committee hearing, the Trump administration saw it as a perfect way to boost military recruitment.
“It would be a massive tragedy to let this moment pass where we can tell this story and inculcate an entire generation of youth into this amazing story that is the United States Army,” he said.
Of course, it’s also a way to boost Trump’s ego, who has put the official attendance at 250,000 — though based on footage of sparse crowds, most estimate attendance at about 100,000. Even Elon Musk’s AI chatbot, Grok, called the 250,000 number “exaggerated.”