WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump warned Tuesday that anyone who protests at the U.S. military parade here on Saturday will be met with “very heavy force.”
Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that they’re going to be “celebrating big on Saturday,” referring to the parade that will wind its way through downtown Washington, D.C.
“If there’s any protester that wants to come out, they will be met with very big force,” Trump said. “I haven’t even heard about a protest, but you know, this is people that hate our country, but they will be met with very heavy force.”
The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The president also addressed the protests of the administration’s immigration raids in Los Angeles. “These are paid insurrectionists,” he said about the demonstrators.
The military parade Saturday will mark the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army and is expected to feature tanks and hundreds of other military vehicles and aircraft. It’s estimated to cost about $45 million, including as much as $16 million to repair D.C. streets afterward, U.S. military officials said last month.
Saturday is also Trump’s 79th birthday.
“We’re going to have a fantastic June 14 parade, Flag Day. It’s going to be an amazing day. We have tanks, we have planes, we have all sorts of things. And I think it’s going to be great. We’re going to celebrate our country for a change,” Trump said Tuesday.
Trump said that other countries celebrate the end of World War II and that the U.S. was the only country that did not.
“And we’re the one that won the war,” said Trump, who added that if it weren’t for the U.S., Americans would be speaking German or Japanese.
“We won the war, and we’re the only country that didn’t celebrate it, and we’re going to be celebrating big on Saturday,” he said.
Officials are expecting hundreds of thousands of attendees, Matt McCool, the U.S. Secret Service agent in charge of the Washington field office, said Monday. McCool said they plan to deploy “thousands of agents, officers and specialists from across the country.” People attending the parade or a related festival will be required to go through checkpoints with magnetometers.
Asked about any changes to security planning in light of the L.A. protests, McCool said, “We plan for those things ahead of time”
“We were paying attention, obviously, to what is happening there, and we’ll be ready for that if it were to occur here,” he said, though he added, “We have no intelligence of that happening here, but if it does, we have the resources to handle it.”
U.S. Park Police had several protest permits pending on Monday, but officials “don’t have any significant concerns,” said McCool, who added that they’re tracking “about nine First Amendment activity demonstrations.”
The anti-Trump group No Kings is expecting more than 1,800 rallies nationwide Saturday that organizers said were planned as “a peaceful stand against authoritarian overreach and the gross abuse of power this Administration has shown.”
With Trump’s decision to deploy the National Guard and U.S. Marines to respond to the L.A. demonstrations, the group said in a statement: “This military escalation only confirms what we’ve known: this government wants to rule by force, not serve the people. From major cities to small towns, we’ll rise together and say: we reject political violence. We reject fear as governance. We reject the myth that only some deserve freedom.”
No Kings did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday in reaction to Trump’s comments.
Owen Hayes and Lindsey Pipia contributed.
