"Tin-plated" dictator...

‘We’re going to have some tanks’: Trump outlines Fourth of July celebration

By CAITLIN OPRYSKO

President Donald Trump on Monday insisted that his revamped Fourth of July festivities on the National Mall this week would feature the massive military tanks he desired.

“We’re gonna have a great Fourth of July in Washington, D.C.,” Trump told reporters during a bill signing in the Oval Office, adding that “it will be like no other and it will be special.”

The Washington Post on Monday reported that Trump had been unusually involved in planning the event, and that his Interior Department was grappling with how to accommodate the president’s request that tanks or some other armored vehicles be stationed on the Mall for the event.

The event, which critics say politicizes the historically nonpartisan annual Independence Day celebration, is already set to undergo a massive transformation from years past.

Among other changes, the White House will alter the location of the annual fireworks display. The National Park Service’s usual show will be replaced by one put on by two firms that have donated pyrotechnics valued at $750,000, according to The Post. Trump is also set to give a speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, and the White House is reportedly mulling a ticketed access area for VIPs, though The Post reports that many of the event’s particulars are still up in the air.

Trump has also commissioned a flyover by the plane that serves as Air Force One as well as the Navy’s Blue Angels — “the best fighter jets in the world, and other planes too,” he said Monday.

“I hope a lot of people come, and it’s going to be about this country and it’s a salute to America and I’m going to be here and I’m going to say a few words,” he told reporters.

“And we’re going to have some tanks stationed outside,” he continued, though he added: “Gotta be pretty careful with the tanks because the roads have a tendency not to like to carry heavy tanks, so we have to put them in certain areas. But we have the brand new Sherman tanks and the brand new Abram tanks and we have some incredible equipment — military equipment on display. Brand new. And we’re very proud of it.”

The Sherman tank, mostly used in World War II, was replaced by the U.S. Army in the 1950s.

The Fourth of July event is taking the place of the military parade Trump originally desired, inspired by a Bastille Day parade he saw in France in 2017 but later scrapped when the projected cost of the event became public.

The D.C. City Council firmly pressed back on Trump’s ask Monday morning.

“We have said it before, and we’ll say it again: Tanks, but no tanks,” the council tweeted, along with a Pentagon memo from March 2018 warning against deploying tanks out of concern for D.C. roads.