CNN reported Wednesday that President Trump’s military parade is expected to cost at least $12 million. One official claims that the parade’s estimated expense, however, is reportedly just “a planning figure,” adding that the cost of the function could very well still go up within the next four months.
Scheduled to take place on November 10, defense officials claim the parade will cost as much as the recently cancelled military exercise in South Korea, which President Trump himself called “tremendously expensive.”
Back in June, President Trump tweeted after his summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, “We save a fortune by not doing war games, as long as we are negotiating in good faith – which both sides are!”
A spokesperson for the Pentagon, Colonel Rob Manning, said in early July that the U.S.-South Korea Freedom Guardian Exercise, which has since been cancelled, was expected to cost around $14 million. The U.S. military has long insisted that these exercises are necessary to keep troops alert, despite protestations from North Korean leaders and officials.
In February, President Trump told Fox News, “We’ll see if we can do it at a reasonable cost, and if we can’t, we won’t do it. But the generals would love to do it, I can tell you, and so would I.”
Manning also claimed that the parade is supposed to coincide with the centennial of World War I, which ended on November 11, 1918.
French President Emmanuel Macron will be hosting a parade as well for world leaders celebrating the 100th anniversary of the war’s end.
The focus of the parade will be to celebrate veterans by dressing up U.S. troops in early 20th century military uniforms and incorporating U.S. military aircraft and other wheeled military vehicles into the parade. According to the Pentagon’s initial planning memo, aircraft are expected to fly overhead throughout the entire parade.
The president first decided that the United States would have a military parade of its own after attending last year’s Bastille Day parade in Paris.
CNN previously reported in March that the parade will “integrate with the annual DC Veterans Day parade and focus on the contributions of US veterans from the Revolutionary War to today ‘with an emphasis on the price of freedom.’”
The parade is expected to run from the White House to the U.S. Capitol building, where “veterans and Medal of Honor recipients will surround Trump in the reviewing area” during the event.
