On Saturday, President Donald Trump celebrated the 250th Anniversary of the U.S. Army, as well as Flag Day, with a military parade in the streets of Washington, DC. Irony abounded as left-wingers across the country staged coinciding “no king” protests against Trump while pretending to be patriots, sometimes holding American flags (some of them upside down), Constitution placards, and such. They view those patriotic implements as racist or some other horrible thing most of the time, but they evidently found them to be convenient props for Saturday’s Trump Derangement Syndrome tantrum.

“Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism,” warned George Washington in his Farewell Address in 1796. That is still true today.

According to CBS News, “The ‘No Kings’ theme was orchestrated by the 50501 Movement, to support democracy and against what they call the authoritarian actions of the Trump administration. The name 50501 stands for 50 states, 50 protests, one movement.” The ACLU was part of the coalition effort, and it claimed that more than five million people participated in over 2,100 events nationwide.

“The flag doesn’t belong to President Trump. It belongs to us,” the “No Kings” website exclaims. “On June 14th, we’re showing up everywhere he isn’t — to say no thrones, no crowns, no kings.”

They’re about 250 years late, but okay.

Indeed, that leads me to the other glaring irony: Countries with kings don’t allow “no kings” protests. That pesky fact undermined the entire premise of the agitators.

So does the reality that there are countless obstacles for Trump to accomplish anything. “I don’t feel like a king,” he noted. “I have to go through hell to get things approved.”

Furthermore, some of the signs the protesters held revealed their woefully inadequate public school education. “Democracy against dictators,” read one. We’re a Republic with three coequal branches of government, of course, but none of these marching yahoos minded when Barack Obama and Joe Biden were governing with a phone and a pen.

“We are all immigrants,” read another. Nope. Despite the huge number of foreign-born residents of the U.S., nearly 300 million of us were born here. Many, if not most, of those come from families with decades or centuries of history here in America. At what point are you native? And why must leftists conflate the invasion of illegal aliens at the southern border with the character of their neighbors?

The protests were certainly not as violent as the anti-ICE riots in Los Angeles last week, but there was violence. In LA, police disbanded the crowd after they began throwing objects at officers. In Portland, Oregon, police declared the protest a riot and arrested several people for “criminal actions” after rioters stormed an ICE facility. In Salt Lake City, a man was accidentally shot and killed by a peacekeeping team who fired and hit another man for brandishing a rifle. Minnesota’s protests were canceled after the shocking murders of a state representative and her husband Friday night.

Now, for the contrast.

The military parade in DC was not a “vulgar display,” as California Governor Gavin Newsom insisted. A vulgar display is a pride parade; I think he’s confused. Nevertheless, Newsom argued, “It’s the kind of thing you see with Kim Jong-un, you see it with [Vladimir] Putin, you see [it] with dictators around the world that are weak and just want to demonstrate strength. Weakness masquerading as strength. To fete the dear leader on his birthday? What an embarrassment. Honestly, that’s about as small as it gets.”

On the contrary, veteran political analyst Byron York asserted, “It was a good thing to do. It wasn’t a vanity production for President Donald Trump’s birthday. It wasn’t an authoritarian flex. It wasn’t a threat to the American people.”

In fact, York called it a “dignified celebration of one of the great institutions of American life.” The first parade of military hardware since the Gulf War victory in 1991 focused on the rich history of the Army and, by extension, our nation. Sections of the parade featured soldiers in Continental Army uniforms, followed by other chapters of history, from the War Between the States to World War I and II, Korea, and Vietnam. The Trump administration certainly hopes it keeps the recruiting ball rolling.

The White House estimates the crowd was about 250,000 strong; Leftmedia outlets say it was far smaller. Given that the DC population voted more than 90% for Kamala Harris, and the surrounding counties of Maryland and Virginia aren’t much different, it’s remarkable that anything a Republican does could garner much of a crowd.

Trump spoke, of course, but despite that fact and that it was his 79th birthday, the event was not about him. It was about the Army.

“Time and again, America’s enemies have learned that if you threaten the American people, our soldiers are coming for you,” Trump said. “Your defeat will be certain. Your demise will be final, and your downfall will be total and complete — because our soldiers never give up, never surrender, and never ever quit. They fight, fight, fight, and they win, win, win.”

Against the backdrop of relentless left-wing discontent, it’s comforting to know that millions of Patriots will never quit, either.

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