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.

President Trump is calling on ICE to conduct even more raids and send even more agents into cities with some of the largest “No Kings Day” protests.

“ICE Officers are herewith ordered, by notice of this TRUTH, to do all in their power to achieve the very important goal of delivering the single largest Mass Deportation Program in History,” the president wrote on Truth Social Sunday evening.

“In order to achieve this, we must expand efforts to detain and deport Illegal Aliens in America’s largest Cities, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, where Millions upon Millions of Illegal Aliens reside. 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,” he continued. The president then called back to the European far-right concept of “remigration” before offering his “unwavering support” to the FBI, ICE, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Remigration is a fairly new term for Trump—it is popular in Europe, where the right has adopted it to encourage immigrants to return to their country of origin, or even in some cases to go to a third country—and it’s likely that he got it from Stephen Miller or other extremist advisers.

But it’s also worth noting that the three cities the president named directly had some of the largest protests in direct opposition to him and his policies. Los Angeles saw 200,000 protestors, Chicago saw 75,000, and New York City saw 50,000. All three of these deep-blue liberal cities brought a bigger crowd than Trump’s own military birthday parade, and each one is a sanctuary city. Trump’s messaging here is unambiguous: The president will make you and your city a target out of sheer spite for immigrants and the community members supporting them. Protesting the president’s crackdown makes you a threat to his administration.

Far-right groups are humming with talk of potential violence ahead of massive “No Kings” Day demonstrations that are expected to attract millions of protesters Saturday, according to The Wall Street Journal.

In a Telegram channel used by groups affiliated with the Proud Boys, a violent white nationalist group, users have sent posts promoting violence.

“Shoot a couple, the rest will go home. I promise,” said one meme, featuring a photograph of Kevin Costner’s character in The Highwaymen, a 2019 film about Texas rangers tracking down Bonnie and Clyde, holding a shotgun.

“HANG THE TRAITORS, EXPEL THE INVADERS,” said another post.

Jon Lewis, a research fellow at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, told the Journal that the posts were alarming as they might inspire one to “get off the couch, pick up a gun and go out to one of these cities.”

Donald Trump has actively empowered far-right paramilitary groups by pardoning their leaders for crimes related to the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, including Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio. Upon release from his 22-year prison sentence, Tarrio vowed retribution.

Earlier this month, a coalition of Proud Boys leaders filed to sue the federal government for $100 million—plus 6 percent interest—alleging that, in light of their pardons, their arrests and various charges had violated their constitutional rights.

Rallies opposing Trump’s agenda are expected at roughly 2,000 locations across the country Saturday, according to the No Kings Day map. The demonstrations are a planned opposition to the massive military parade planned on the Army’s 250th anniversary (and also Trump’s birthday) in Washington, D.C.

Trump has previously said that any protesters at his precious parade would be “met with very heavy force.”

A clear majority of Americans disapprove of President Trump’s militant handling of the Los Angeles protests, and his approval ratings have firmly fallen into the red.

Journalist G. Elliot Morris collected numbers from various major polls (YouGov/Economist, Quinnipiac, Washington Post/GMU, and AP-NORC) regarding Trump’s response to protests in L.A. and his indiscriminate, quota-based crackdown on immigrants. And while most participants disapprove of the protests themselves by a slim margin, the polls are a resounding rejection of Trump’s federal involvement in them.

An average of 45 percent of Americans disapprove of Trump’s deployment of the Marines and National Guard in Los Angeles, while only 37 percent approve. And an overwhelming 56 percent of respondents thought that state governments should “take the lead” in responding to protest, while just 25 percent thought the federal government should be in charge of it.

More than half of respondents also disapprove of Trump’s immigration policies and the way he is handling deportation. Outrage toward the administration’s draconian activities—masked agents snatching people from their jobs and their homes, tearing children from the arms of their mothers and fathers—continues to grow. Even Trump seems to have noticed, as he backtracked ever so slightly in a post, acknowledging that his deportations were causing farmers to lose “very good, long time workers.”

Only time will tell if something gives before midterm elections in 2026.

Despite what the White House previously said, the United States is absolutely working with Israel after it launched strikes on Iran, according to Israeli and U.S. officials.

The report contradicts messaging issued by the White House late Thursday, when Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed in a statement that “we are not involved in strikes against Iran and our top priority is protecting American forces in the region.”

But by Friday afternoon, another U.S. official had confirmed the country’s involvement in the emerging conflict.

“The official said there are hundreds of thousands of American citizens and other American assets in Israel and the U.S. is working to protect them,” reported Axios’s Barak Ravid.

Israeli strikes have so far killed four senior Iranian commanders, including Hossein Salami, the commander in chief of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Iranian state media confirmed late Thursday, though regional sources told Reuters that up to 20 senior commanders had been killed.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, said there would be “severe punishment” for the strikes. Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi rejected calls for restraint Friday in the wake of Israel’s large-scale attack.

But why the U.S. is embedded in a new global conflict is unclear. Donald Trump earned national support in part due to his isolationist campaign promises and his pledge to swiftly end the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. Six months into his second term, he has not only failed to do either but has seemingly embroiled America in a dire situation in the Middle East.

Trump publicly stoked tensions between Iran and Israel for days, reportedly under the assumption that it would encourage Iran to return to the negotiating table over a potential nuclear deal. That hasn’t happened. Instead, Iran has backtracked out of discussions that were scheduled to take place later this weekend.

In a phone call with ABC News’s Jonathan Karl Friday morning, the president 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, promising that if Iran refused to come up with a nuclear deal then there would be “nothing left.”

Despite public opinion, 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 America’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.

President Trump thinks that Iran will now somehow be more willing to concede to a nuclear deal after being bombed by Israel, according to Axios.

“I don’t think so. Maybe the opposite,” Trump said when asked if Israel’s attack hurt efforts to close the nuclear deal between Iran and the U.S. “Maybe now they will negotiate seriously. I gave Iran 60 days, today is day 61.… They should have made a deal.… Maybe now it will happen.”

Trump seems to think that Isreal striking nuclear facilities while killing multiple military leaders and scientists—and several civilians, according to state media in Iran—on Thursday evening would cause Iran to retreat with its tail between its legs. But Trump’s comments came roughly at the same time as Iran began raining missiles on Tel Aviv—hardly a sign that it was ready to slink back to the negotiating table.

Indeed, Iran’s refusal to back down in the face of violence, pressure, and sanctions is well documented. Thursday’s strikes make it more likely that Iran will redouble its efforts to acquire a nuclear bomb, not that it would reenter talks. And this was fully demonstrated today as Iran struck back against Israel, launching multiple missiles at Tel Aviv. The extent of the damage is still unknown at this time. But what is known is that American intelligence has helped Israel repel Iran’s missiles—another reason to suspect Trump is being delusional when he clings to hope that he’ll have a deal soon.