President Donald Trump deemed his multimillion dollar military birthday parade a “tremendous success” Sunday, despite it being dwarfed by the thousands protesting against his presidency on the same day.
While speaking to reporters on his way to Canada for the G7 summit, Trump briefly reflected on the eight-block parade that celebrated the U.S. Army’s 250th anniversary Saturday—and also coincided with his 79th birthday—and had nothing but praise to sing.
“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.”
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“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.”
Although an exact number of attendees has yet to be released, crowd figures were considerably lower than the 250,000-plus total White House Communications Director Steven Cheung touted on X Saturday, according to MSNBC and the Associated Press.
“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 was at the scene, told the hosts of MSNBC’s The Weekend on Sunday.
Footage from the event also showed sparse crowds, with the overall size arguably being comparably smaller to the thousands who marched in the “No Kings” demonstrations across the country on the same day.
Data journalist G. Elliot Morris estimated that “roughly 4-6m people” joined the 2,000-plus “No Kings” demonstrations, which protested against Trump’s policies, potentially making it one of the largest demonstrations in U.S. history.
A few days prior to Trump’s parade, the National Weather Service had predicted rainfall with a possibility of thunderstorms in Washington D.C. The parade’s itinerary even kicked off around 30 minutes earlier than planned in anticipation of the rain, however a light drizzle ensued instead.
84 military vehicles and over 6,000 soldiers marched through the parade to celebrate the Army’s history, per ABC News.
“Today we commemorate a date that did not just change America’s history but the history of the entire world,” Trump said of the military’s anniversary Saturday. “It has done so much and set the devil himself flying into full retreat.”
Joining the president in the stands was First Lady Melania Trump along with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance, and Second Lady Usha Vance.
