Rand Paul Shreds Trump’s Pathetic Military Parade

Senator Rand Paul slammed Donald Trump’s pathetic military birthday parade as un-American.

During an appearance on NBC News’s Meet the Press Sunday, the Kentucky Republican revealed that he was “not a big fan” of Trump’s outrageous military parade.

“I’ve just never liked the idea of the parade, because I grew up in the ’70s and ’80s, and the only parades I can remember are Soviet parades for the most part, or North Korean parades.”

Rand explained that, historically, American parades haven’t been about demonstrating military might, but about celebrating peace, safety, and victory.

“We were rejoicing the end of war, we were rejoicing our soldiers coming home, and that absolutely ought to be commemorated, discussed every year—Memorial Day, Veterans Day—but just, we never glorified weapons so much,” he said.

“I know [Trump] means well, I don’t think he means for any of this to be depicted in another fashion, but I’m just not a big fan,” Paul continued.

Paul also noted the cost seemed especially inappropriate while the country was “two trillion in the hole.” The festivities have reportedly run up a whopping $40 million price tag.

The Kentucky senator’s practically peacenik turn extended into comments on the Middle East, and he chastized Senator Lindsey Graham for his barbaric response to Israel’s strike on Iran.

“Well, his initial response was, ‘Game on,’ and I don’t consider war to be a game,” Paul said. He added that he hoped Trump’s “instincts” to not get involved in war would prevail despite pressure from Graham and other Republicans.

Last week, Paul took a shot at Trump over the annual White House picnic, from which the Republican claimed his family had been disinvited over his opposition to raising the debt ceiling to fund Trump’s “big beautiful bill,” which will add $2.4 trillion to the national deficit over the next decade. Trump stepped in, assuring the senator he was invited and calling him the “toughest vote in the history of the U.S. Senate.”

Paul told NBC News that while speaking to Trump at the parade, he’d told the president that he was “not an absolute no.”

“I don’t have as much trouble with the tax cuts. I think there should be more spending cuts, but if they want my vote, they’ll have to negotiate,” Paul said, but doubled down on his concerns about raising the debt ceiling.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement may not have the cash to carry out Donald Trump’s aggressive deportation agenda.

The agency is already $1 billion over budget and could run out of funds as soon as next month, Axios reported Monday. The task force’s dwindling bank account has sparked concerns among lawmakers on both sides of the aisle that the president might look to cannibalize other agencies or sources of revenue in order to keep hunting and forcing people out of the country.

Some lawmakers warned that ICE’s parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, could be in violation of the law if it continues to spend at its current rate.

“Trump’s DHS is spending like drunken sailors,” Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy told Axios.

Trump has tasked ICE to “do all in their power” to create the “single largest Mass Deportation Program in History.” That includes expanding its efforts to specifically target Democratic-led cities around the country, including Chicago and New York.

“These, and other such Cities, are the core of the Democrat Power Center, where they use Illegal Aliens to expand their Voter Base, cheat in Elections, and grow the Welfare State, robbing good paying Jobs and Benefits from Hardworking American Citizens,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Sunday night, continuing to elevate an election conspiracy that failed to collect evidence and was thoroughly disproven in the wake of the 2020 election. “These Radical Left Democrats are sick of mind, hate our Country, and actually want to destroy our Inner Cities—And they are doing a good job of it! There is something wrong with them.”

Trump and his allies have continued to apply pressure on future U.S. elections by advancing executive orders that would require citizens to display additional documentation before they are allowed to drop their ballot at the voting booth. Last week, a federal judge blocked portions of one such order, writing that adding barriers to the voting process would only harm eligible voters. That is, especially given the fact that it is illegal and impossible for noncitizens to vote in U.S. elections.

“That is why they believe in Open Borders, Transgender for Everybody, and Men playing in Women’s Sports—And that is why I want ICE, Border Patrol, and our Great and Patriotic Law Enforcement Officers, to FOCUS on our crime ridden and deadly Inner Cities, and those places where Sanctuary Cities play such a big role,” the president continued in his post. “You don’t hear about Sanctuary Cities in our Heartland!”

But exactly how ICE is supposed to meet Trump’s demand is becoming increasingly unclear. The agency has already required assistance from other law enforcement services—such as the FBI, the DEA, and the ATF—in order to help meet its White House-imposed quota of 3,000 immigration-related arrests per day, CNN reported last month.

The demand has placed even more pressure on Congress to pass Trump’s “big, beautiful” bill, which would allot $75 billion to ICE over the next five years.

Donald Trump’s military parade was an undeniable failure, but apparently, the small crowds may have been due to pathetic party planning. 

Amanda Moore, a journalist who spent 11 months undercover with the alt-right, filmed the crowds of swirling onlookers Saturday—but as she explained, they were in the wrong place. 

“The marketing material said the entrance was on 14, but in reality it was on 12 St and you had to go through this pen for two blocks. Everyone who was around to answer questions was an asshole, too. Probably part of the issue!” she wrote on X. 

In a video taken by Anarchy Princess, an activist best known for messing with Peter Navarro, Trump supporters and other attendees swarmed around a large street where they couldn’t actually see the parade, and were promptly ushered out of the viewing zone.* Moore said she’d observed that there were more than 3,000 to 5,000 people gathered in the wrong place, and that many of them had already missed the parade, which was scheduled to begin at 6:30 p.m. but actually started earlier to beat the rain.  

Anarchy Princess wrote on X,  “Ok so there actually was a ton of people at the #250army parade but they were all stuck outside the gates like herded cattle and never made it to the bleachers.” 

“Lots of disappointed children who waited hours in long lines in the sun only to be herded out through piles of trash and didn’t even see the parade,” she wrote in a separate post. 

Doug Landry, the founder of 50 Thirteen, a live event production firm, wrote in a thread on X that the parade was “legitimately the worst executed mass attendance event I’ve ever seen.”

In another post, Landry blamed the event planners for providing maps to attendees that made no sense. 

“But how is anyone supposed to know where to go? These maps are the sum total of what they put out and they’re total garbage,” he wrote. “How is a regular person supposed to figure this out?”

Landry wrote that the worst party planning offense was several VIP bleachers that were somehow pretty much empty. 

* This piece has been updated to correctly state who filmed this video.

Utah Senator Mike Lee is under fire for claiming, without a shred of evidence, that the man who gunned down Minnesota Democratic State Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband John in their home on Sunday was a radical leftist.

“This is what happens when Marxists don’t get their way,” Lee posted on X, with the horrifying image of Boetler wearing a human face mask and heavily armed. Lee, who is 54 years old, tweets under the handle “@BasedMikeLee.”

“Nightmare on Waltz [sic] Street,” Lee posted again, referring to Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.

Elon Musk also felt the need to chime in, writing, “the far left is murderously violent,” on X. Not only did these posts display an appalling lack of basic human empathy, they were also wrong. The shooter, Vance Boelter, was appointed by Walz to a bipartisan advisory board in 2019—the apparent basis for the unfounded conspiracy theory that he was a radical leftist. In fact, he is a Republican, a Trump supporter, and an anti-gay evangelical preacher, as confirmed by his own roommate, David Carlson.

“Carlson—his roommate and best friend, known him since fourth grade—did say Boelter voted for Trump and that he was a strong supporter,” Minneapolis’s KARE TV reported. Boelter also had multiple other Democrats, including Ilhan Omar, on his hitlist.

“1. Reports increasingly confirm that this deranged man was conservative. 2. Using this tragedy to push your own political agenda is disgraceful, people are dead. 3. Saying this on Father’s Day, a day you should be spending quality time with your loved ones, is extremely sad,” Nina Turner added.

“Hey @elonmusk, the person who killed my daughter and 16 others was a Trump and MAGA supporter. The person who killed at Tree of Life in Pittsburgh, MAGA. Those who attacked DC on January 6th causing the death of police, MAGA. I could go on,” said Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter Jamie was murdered in the Parkland school shooting. “Violence must be condemned. If your only interested in politicizing it, then move on and fuck off.”

The right is so eager to claim that the left is prone to violence that they’ll just spread sensationalist lies that are so weak they can be debunked in minutes. All while they are just as apt, if not more, to political violence than the left.

Donald Trump wants credit for being at the center of several geopolitical conflicts.

In a lengthy Truth Social post on Sunday, the president told his followers that he had been the singular solution for calming tensions between Pakistan and India, Serbia and Kosovo, Egypt and Ethiopia, and now, Israel and Iran—and he wants the “people to understand” that any peace was because of his “intervention.”

“Iran and Israel should make a deal, and will make a deal, just like I got India and Pakistan to make, in that case by using TRADE with the United States to bring reason, cohesion, and sanity into the talks with two excellent leaders who were able to quickly make a decision and STOP!” Trump wrote.

“Also, during my first term, Serbia and Kosovo were going at it hot and heavy, as they have for many decades, and this long time conflict was ready to break out into WAR. I stopped it (Biden has hurt the longer term prospects with some very stupid decisions, but I will fix it, again!),” he continued. “Another case is Egypt and Ethiopia, and their fight over a massive dam that is having an effect on the magnificent Nile River. There is peace, at least for now, because of my intervention, and it will stay that way!”

“Likewise, we will have PEACE, soon, between Israel and Iran! Many calls and meetings now taking place. I do a lot, and never get credit for anything, but that’s OK, the PEOPLE understand,” Trump said, before dropping an unsavory twist on his nationalistic campaign tagline: “MAKE THE MIDDLE EAST GREAT AGAIN!”

Israel and Iran traded missiles for the third straight day Sunday in an escalating conflict that has so far killed 224 people in Iran and 14 people in Israel. Some of the Iranian casualties were military targets: two regional sources told Reuters that 20 senior commanders had been killed, as well as six of the country’s top nuclear scientists.

But watching the U.S. president beg for recognition as a supposed peacemaker is a far cry from where he stood on the Israel-Iran conflict just last week.

In a phone call with ABC News’s Jonathan Karl Friday morning, Trump referred to the attacks as “excellent,” remarking that Iran “got hit hard, very hard,” and that there was “a lot more” to come.

Israel’s attack, per Trump, was months in the making.

“I told them it would be much worse than anything they know, anticipated, or were told, that the United States makes the best and most lethal military equipment anywhere in the World, BY FAR, and that Israel has a lot of it, with much more to come—And they know how to use it,” Trump posted to Truth Social on Friday, promising that if Iran refused to come up with a nuclear deal, then there would be “nothing left.”

Despite public opposition, Trump pulled the U.S. out of the original Iran nuclear deal in 2018. That arrangement, signed by several world powers, restricted Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. Countries and organizations around the world lamented the U.S.’s withdrawal, while conservatives and Israel celebrated it.

In the aftermath of the withdrawal, political analysts pointed to three possible reasons for the massive policy reversal: that Trump was attempting to shed the legacy of his predecessor, President Barack Obama; that Trump was cozying up to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; and/or that he had been influenced by a widening cast of yes-men in the White House.