This Thursday, President Donald Trump is holding a Fourth of July celebration in D.C. with himself at the center, breaking markedly with past precedent and turning the nation’s independence day celebration into a partisan event. Former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton spoke out against the developments early this Thursday, denouncing the president resorting to turning the Fourth of July into a political spectacle and dragging the military into the mess with him via hosting displays of tanks and flyovers of military aircraft, including a plane used as Air Force One.
She shared:
‘We need a strong national defense, but a president shouldn’t need it next to him in a parade to show his patriotism.’
The president resorting to hosting the military as part of his Fourth of July spectacle comes some time after he first tried to get such an event going. The administration initially planned for a military-centered event to mark Veterans Day last fall, but that fell through in the face of issues like sky-high costs. This time around, the White House isn’t letting costs stop them, though.
Notably enough, shortly before the event was expected to begin, there were no reports of any tickets even being distributed to the Democratic National Committee for them to share for this supposedly nonpolitical event. Many of the Republicans who were invited are apparently not going to be there — not even Donald Jr., Ivanka, or her husband and fellow presidential adviser Jared Kushner will be there. Instead, they will all be in The Hamptons. Reportedly, as the administration braces for a potential dismal showing after all this commotion, they’re even inviting staffers to participate in a raffle in which they can win up to ten tickets each, which is above any customary number granted to White House events.
Besides these woes — leaving “heads spinning” at the White House, as one staffer put it to Vanity Fair — there’s a major counter-event planned for D.C. hosted by the activist group CODEPINK. Besides numerous street-level events, they’ll also be hosting giant anti-Trump effigies like the infamous blimp depicting Trump as an angry baby and a giant robotic depiction of him angrily tweeting while sitting on a golden toilet. These protests have already been established as getting on the president’s nerves.
Check out Twitter’s response to Clinton stepping into the controversy…
Featured Image via screenshot
