[Editorial Note: Every so often, my scheduling/writing decisions turn out to be incredibly wrong. Yesterday, for instance, I wrote about something that seemed important and was worth pointing out because Trump seemed to be backing down and (for once) doing the right thing after all. Within hours of posting the article, however, the news broke that the White House had flip-flopped and decided that they weren't backing down, and instead had reinstated the original policy of ICE doing workplace raids on farmworkers, meatpackers, hotel workers, and restaurants. Eventually, economics will force them to reverse course once again, but it's questionable how long this will take after the fiasco of this flip-flop. In any case, what I'm trying to say is (hindsight being 20/20 and all) I wish I had run the following article yesterday rather than winding up with egg on my face.]

Donald Trump, once again, seems to be experiencing a case of "crowd size envy" in a big way. Or perhaps "in a little way" would be more appropriate? The White House confidently reported that 250,000 people showed up to view the Dear Leader's birthday military extravaganza, but the only way you can believe that figure is if you avoid seeing any of the actual photos of the crowd.

If this all sounds familiar, it should. It was in fact the premiere bit of idiocy from Trump's first term, when he claimed that a record crowd of a bazillion people (or whatever it was, I am too lazy to look it up, sorry) attended his inauguration when the photos showed one of the lightest inauguration turnouts in modern history. Thus began the "Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?" theme that continues to this day from Trump.

This time around, the White House claimed a quarter of a million people attended the parade on Saturday. This is pretty laughably overstated (again, just look at pretty much any photo of the crowds taken that day). There were numerous overlapping problems, it appears, from incredibly incompetent event services to weather problems (thunderstorms were threatening, all day) to the Washington summer heat and humidity to what by all accounts was a very low-key and low-energy event all around. They added up to lots of empty bleachers and very sparse crowds along the parade route.

The best photographic commentary on the day comes from photos of Trump himself, who appeared visibly bored with the whole thing. His V.I.P. attendees were just as bored as well (Marco Rubio got caught in a big yawn). Trump sitting and scowling at soldiers going by will likely be how this parade is remembered by history (if it is remembered at all).

Reviewers in the media took note:

Things got truly bizarre about an hour into the event, when an Army band started playing instrumental covers of popular songs, including Heart's "Barracuda" and Guns N' Roses' "Sweet Child of Mine" -- which set a vibe that was part music video, part 1980s bar mitzvah. Though whoever chose the music clearly has a barbed sense of humor. On the set list was Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Fortunate Son," a '60s-era tune about rich kids getting out of fighting in Vietnam -- which could have been written about Trump, the son of wealthy real estate developer who avoided that conflict after a timely diagnosis of bone spurs.

On television, the parade felt listless. As members of the Army Special Forces passed by, an announcer stated that the unit "is always combat ready, mentally and physically tough and prepared to fight our country's adversaries." Yet its march was an uncoordinated shuffle. Soldiers carrying drones looked like boys carrying toys. On the whole, the parade, wasn't "America, hell yeah!" It was "America, okey dokey." And it violated a cardinal rule of governing by theatrics, which is that the drama should be absorbing. Cut to the viral footage of Secretary of State Marco Rubio barely stifling a yawn. And, at the end, a speech by Trump lacking in oomph. As he declared, "We're the hottest country in the world right now," he sounded as if he was ready to nap.

One reporter from the New Yorker noticed a rather desperate last-minute attempt to boost the crowd's size:

Tanks that had arrived from around the country had been sitting idly on the Mall for a few days; a summer thunderstorm was now threatening to rain out the President's parade. I had seen an ad on Craigslist offering a "flat fee of $1,000 paid in cryptocurrency" to seat fillers in red hats and gold accessories "for space maximization and attendance."

Well, attendance was pretty minimal but "space" -- all those empty acres of lawn and empty bleachers -- was indeed maximized!

But perhaps you are thinking these are left-wing media sources. So let's go to Military.com to see what they had to say about the event:

Still, for other troops, it was hard to ignore the unusual imagery of parading military hardware in the nation's capital -- a long-standing Trump aspiration but also a hallmark of authoritarian regimes like Russia and North Korea -- and, to them, it was an enormous escalation in politicizing the force. One midlevel officer called the event "repulsive."

. . .

But the real mood of the event was shaped less by flare-ups than by a strange quiet.

Tanks lined the streets and a central stage piped in music, but for most of the parade, the crowd stood in near silence. There were no speakers, and outside of the immediate space in front of the stage, there was no music or emcee.

Only the occasional cheer broke the stillness. Soldiers marched largely without musical accompaniment as military bands were notably absent for most of the procession, and long, awkward gaps stretched between units and vehicles.

Unlike the colorful, crowd-pleasing spectacle of something like the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, there was little attempt to engage the audience or build any visual momentum.

. . .

To make matters worse, most of the designated cooling tents failed, and Military.com observed multiple attendees showing signs of heat exhaustion, several of whom had to be medically evacuated.

The New Republic chalked up a lot of the blame for the sparse crowds to sheer incompetence:

Donald Trump's military parade was an undeniable failure, but apparently, the small crowds may have been due to pathetic party planning.

. . .

In a video taken by Anarchy Princess, an activist best known for messing with Peter Navarro, Trump supporters and other attendees swarmed around a large street where they couldn't actually see the parade, and were promptly ushered out of the viewing zone. Moore said she'd observed that there were more than 3,000 to 5,000 people gathered in the wrong place, and that many of them had already missed the parade, which was scheduled to begin at 6:30 p.m. but actually started earlier to beat the rain.

Anarchy Princess wrote on X, "Ok so there actually was a ton of people at the #250army parade but they were all stuck outside the gates like herded cattle and never made it to the bleachers."

"Lots of disappointed children who waited hours in long lines in the sun only to be herded out through piles of trash and didn't even see the parade," she wrote in a separate post.

Another journalist in attendance made a poignant comment: "Everyone who was around to answer questions was an asshole, too. Probably part of the issue!"

Doug Landry, the founder of 50 Thirteen, a live event production firm, wrote in a thread on X that the parade was "legitimately the worst executed mass attendance event I've ever seen."

In another post, Landry blamed the event planners for providing maps to attendees that made no sense.

"But how is anyone supposed to know where to go? These maps are the sum total of what they put out and they're total garbage," he wrote. "How is a regular person supposed to figure this out?"

Landry wrote that the worst party planning offense was several VIP bleachers that were somehow pretty much empty.

His post on this issue was scathing, and ended with: "We are talkin' Trump 1.0 inauguration empty. Someone fucked up here."

The Detroit Free Press pointed out the obvious comparison to be made, in the split-screen coverage of the day (emphasis in original):

This time, Trump insisted on his parade, and he got it. Because, being the master of marketing that he is, Our President just had that gut feeling that there were very few among us who could resist the temptation to spend hours of our Saturday watching Trump and tanks and... more tanks and... tanks. And of course soldiers (to go with the tanks), and military planes doing flyovers (flying over all those tanks).

Soooooo... have you by any chance seen any photos of the parade?

Because... wow. You may recall the predictions that this parade would draw close to 200,000 wildly cheering attendees (who, presumably, just wouldn't be able to get enough of those tanks). But instead, the Big Beautiful Event looked more like those photos of Trump's first term inauguration in January 2017, when he claimed the National Mall was packed with his supporters when, in actual fact, it was pretty much tumbleweeds -- at least in comparison to just about every other presidential inauguration in modern history. And as is his tendency, Trump again tried to insist on Saturday that there were thousands, no, millions, no, billions! Of fans who came to his Saturday birthday party parade.

Umm... no. Sorry. Uh-uh. Nope.

You know what? Maybe Trump got his meager crowd size confused with the No Kings Day protest crowds that were erupting not just all around the country, but around the entire world. Estimates of total crowd participation for No Kings Day events ranged from 5 million, reported by Katie Couric Media on her Instagram, to a high of 12.1 million, according to the Alt National Park Service, which describes itself on its Facebook page this way: "The official 'Resistance' team of the U.S. National Park Service. Our mission is to stand up for the National Park Service to help protect and preserve the environment for present and future generations."

. . .

With numbers so large and no official counter, we may never get the actual complete count, at least not for a while. But one thing even more recognized media sources seem to agree on is that there were indeed millions who turned out to support No Kings Day. Not hundreds, and not thousands. Millions.

Whereas Trump's "Happy Birthday To Me Spectacular" couldn't even attract one quarter of one million.

And that is the most poignant comment of all, and it is (doubtlessly) the reason the White House is now desperately trying to boost Trump's parade crowd size number. But even if you take them at their word (which I do not), it would mean that the No Kings rallies pulled in a crowd that was 20 times larger than Trump managed. And if you use a much more realistic estimate of only 100,000 attendees at Trump's parade (which is even extremely generous, as any photo which shows the crowd easily proves), it would mean that 50 times the people who showed up at Trump's birthday parade turned out instead to protest him. It was the largest single-day protest in American history, in fact. And that is how I will be remembering the day.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant