June 16, 2025
It’s Monday morning in Washington, DC, and the cleanup from Trump’s parade continues, as workers take down security fences and empty overflowing trash cans.
I almost left town for this event, expecting a visual scene comparable to Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will, with soldiers saluting the Dear Leader to the deafening cheers of red-hatted MAGA hordes.
But instead, we got something out of Idiocracy – a confused and disjointed “perade” featuring soldiers casually strolling down the avenue as a sparse crowd wilted in the heat.
The signs were there ahead of time. A couple days before the parade, I went to the National Mall to check out how they were destroying my beloved city. It was a maze of anti-scale fences that stretched from the Air and Space Museum to the Lincoln Memorial. More than 18 miles of them.
Once inside the secure zone, I couldn’t figure how to get out – and I live here! After ending up trapped by the FDR Memorial, I biked across the Potomac River rather than go back across the Mall, only to discover fences on the Virginia side as well.
The Sad Parade
Fortunately, not many people attended. That was evident when I rolled down to check out the scene on Saturday afternoon.
During big events on the Mall, the police close 15th Street by the White House. During the Women’s March in 2017, this was an unbroken sea of people that extended for more than a mile.
But on Saturday, hardly anyone was there, despite this spot being just a few blocks from the entrance to the parade and within walking distance of several Metro stops.
The crowds might have been stuck elsewhere. There’s an excellent thread by Doug Landry, a communications expert and event planner, that highlights how poorly this event was organized, in terms of crowd management and logistics. I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t navigate the vast security theater; thousands were forced to walk miles in utter confusion.
Maybe they shouldn’t have fired all the experts and replaced them with talentless Trump cronies! Read Amanda Moore’s piece in Mother Jones about how MAGA took over America250, the organization behind the Sad Parade.
Where I did find a crowd was Logan Circle. The No Kings movement had planned demonstrations around the country (which were historic and massive) but had excluded DC, not wanting a confrontation.
Refuse Fascism led a march anyway. Hundreds of people marched down 14th Street to the White House for a demonstration. They chanted, “Trump must go now!”
Among them was Patricia Eguino, last seen heckling Proud Boy Enrique Tarrio. Refuse Fascism told her to turn down her trademark death metal screams – she was scaring people!
Meanwhile, parade-goers were disappointed. Several of my favorite chud livestreamers from Freedom Corner attended after grifting money to go, promising their viewers live coverage of the MAGA celebration.
Instead, they got buffertifa, as demand crashed the network on Constitution Avenue. It was the worst possible result for livestreamers. No streaming, no viewers, no donations.
Those watching on TV got a good idea of the pathetic nature of the spectacle – disjointed collections of military equipment drifted by while Trump and his employees (including Melania) tried not to appear bored.
The soldier holding the drone has, rightfully, become a meme. It’s the perfect illustration of the end of our superpower status. Trump likes to boast about our unbeatable military but after seeing the Sad Parade, is anyone convinced?
The indignities continued after dark. The poor management of this event meant that everyone had to exit at a chokepoint lined by concrete barriers.
Awaiting them was a gauntlet of Antifa, marchers from Refuse Fascism and local anti-Trump demonstrators who heckled the red hat-wearing crowd with chants of “Trump sucks!” as they tried to find their way home.
Filming the fiasco was Anarchy Princess, who captured some priceless moments of MAGA hypocrisy and dysfunction, such as J6er Chris Quaglin arguing with the crowd, white power fanboy Jake Lang running away and the “Proud Boy den mother” Suzzanne Monk bumming a cigarette off Antifa, a group that she claims are terrorists.
The theme of the Trump administration is incompetence.
The people who crashed the economy with tariffs, instigated riots with immigrant sweeps and failed to stop wars in Ukraine, Gaza and Iran, could not manage to put on a successful parade despite having $45 million and the entire US Army behind them.
They say that weakness is provocative. So is incompetence.
That’s the real message of the Sad Parade. America does not have its shit together.
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