What are you up to this weekend? If you’re American, then there’s only one right answer to the question: celebrating the 79th birthday of our lord and saviour, Donald John Trump. As you will know, and already have marked in your calendar, there’s a big military parade happening in Washington DC on Saturday 14 June. Nominally this is to mark the US army’s 250th anniversary, but thanks to the machinations of time and space it happens to fall on Trump’s birthday: the parade has been widely branded as a big boy birthday party for the president.
If you can’t get to DC to physically watch Trump’s parade then I’m sure you’re desperate to watch it on TV. ABC News, which recently dropped its correspondent Terry Moran for a social media post calling Stephen Miller, the Trump administration deputy chief of staff a “world class hater”, plans to cover the parade across programs and platforms, beginning 6pm on Saturday. Networks such as CBS and NBC seem to have relegated coverage to their streaming channels. Fox and NewsNation, meanwhile, will be going all out for dear leader’s celebrations. Which will be lavish: the event is costing as much as $45m, not including all the damage that military vehicles are going to do to the roads in DC. And the best part of all this? You, the taxpayer, are footing the bill! Who needs money for schools and infrastructure, eh? We the people want to see big tanks, goose-stepping soldiers and missiles that go boom.
