Muriel Bowser's Response To Trump's Tweet About His Military Parade Is An Education
On Friday, Aug. 17, President Donald Trump announced that he was canceling proposed plans for a military parade in Washington D.C. over a "ridiculously high" cost estimate from local politicians. Well, his comments didn't go over too great and garnered quite a bit of backlash — especially from one of the very local politicians that he was accusing. Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser's response to Trump's tweet about his military parade is coming at him with straight facts.
Bowser's message came just an hour after Trump bashed local politicians on Twitter, accusing them of jacking up the event's price tag to $92 million, around $80 million more than initially estimated. His tweet read:
The local politicians who run Washington, D.C. (poorly) know a windfall when they see it. When asked to give us a price for holding a great celebratory military parade, they wanted a number so ridiculously high that I cancelled it. Never let someone hold you up!
Bowser immediately hit back at Trump with some sarcasm, writing on Twitter that she "finally" got through to "the reality star in the White House" about how much it costs to actually put on a parade in Washington D.C. She said:
Yup, I’m Muriel Bowser, mayor of Washington DC, the local politician who finally got thru to the reality star in the White House with the realities ($21.6M) of parades/events/demonstrations in Trump America (sad).
A read, ladies and gentleman. Besides, there's apparently a really good reason behind the hefty price tag. According to CNBC, the costs were necessary to pay for the troops to attend the parade, to ensure security, to get the aircraft and other assets to the event, and more.
Ever since Trump announced the plans for the parade, people have been criticizing him, saying there are better ways the money could be spent, with suggestions including supporting veterans, providing Flint, Michigan with clean water, and more.
According to The Hill, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) urged Trump to use the money to fund health benefits for veterans instead, prompting Trump to lash against him, labeling Blumenthal a "loser."
"How can 'Senator' Richard Blumenthal, who went around for twenty years as a Connecticut politician bragging that he was a great Marine war hero in Vietnam (then got caught and sobbingly admitted he was neither a Marine nor ever in Vietnam), pass judgement on anyone?" Trump wrote, citing the time The New York Times exposed him in 2010 for claiming that he "served in Vietnam," despite never performing military service in the country. "Loser!"
In Trump's defense, though, he's probably lashing out out of sheer disappointment. Although the Pentagon announced on Aug. 16 that the event would be postponed until 2019, Trump has been looking forward to it for a while. He was reportedly so impressed by the Bastille Day parade he saw during a trip to France with French President Emmanuel Macron in 2017 that he returned home talking about a similar event for military service members.
“Because of what I witnessed, we may do something like that on July 4th in Washington down Pennsylvania [Avenue],” Trump explained back in September 2017, per The Hill. “We’re thinking … of having a really great parade, to show our military strength.”
Maybe he didn't consider that having a "great" parade would cost a lot of money. But on the bright side, he's at least got another year now to think this thing through a bit more thoroughly. See, it's a blessing in disguise.
