Hillary Clinton Needles Trump Over ‘Low-Energy’ Military Parade Crowds
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took aim at one of President Donald Trump’s greatest insecurities on Sunday, needling him over the lackluster crowd at his Washington, D.C., military parade the day before.
In an Instagram post, Clinton urged people to “compare and contrast” photos from Trump’s sparsely attended event, which also coincided with his birthday on Saturday, with images from the visibly packed “No Kings” protests around the country.
“On the one hand, Trump’s low-energy Dear Leader parade (that cost you $45 million),” she wrote. “On the other, millions of people across the country gathering peacefully to say: Here, we have no kings.”
According to an Associated Press report, the attendance at Trump’s parade appeared to fall far short of the projected 200,000-person crowd Army officials had anticipated. Images from the event showed empty bleachers and subdued observers watching as troops marched by.
“Despite Trump’s attempts to hype the event, attendance appeared light — there were considerably fewer people on the National Mall on Saturday than there would be for a typical Fourth of July celebration,” HuffPost’s S.V. Date reported. “And attendance at Trump’s parade was dwarfed by the millions who showed up at roughly 2,000 anti-Trump ‘No Kings’ protests in cities and towns all over the country.”
White House spokesperson Steven Cheung claimed Saturday that 250,000 people attended the parade, although reporters from BBC and NBC News have both disputed this suggestion. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The “No Kings” protests, which sought to call out Trump’s abuses of power, took place in as many as 2,100 locations, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, one of the organizations that helped coordinate the demonstrations. The ACLU estimated the events were attended by more than 5 million protesters as people rallied to oppose Trump’s hard-line immigration policies and startling use of the military to respond to largely peaceful demonstrations in Los Angeles.
The discrepancy in crowd sizes, in addition to likely bruising Trump’s ego, also points to a widespread discontent with his policies.
A June Quinnipiac University poll found 54% of registered voters disapproved of Trump’s handling of immigration policies, while 56% disapproved of his handling of the economy. Overall, 54% disapproved of his handling of the presidency in general.