A Letter From President Eisenhower About Trump’s Birthday Military Parade

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June 14, 2025

Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

Dear Marc,

From the quiet hills of my farm, I have just learned that President Donald Trump is staging a massive military parade in Washington, D.C., on his 79th birthday. He claims this spectacle is to honor the 250th anniversary of the United States Army, but I suspect—as you surely do—that it’s less a tribute to our military and more a monument to himself.

I write to you not as a fellow soldier—you never wore the uniform—but as someone I know to be a principled, thoughtful citizen of the republic, and as a man who understands what real patriotism and public service look like. You have spent your life practicing law, teaching the Constitution, and defending the values this nation was built upon. In many ways, yours has been a civilian service no less noble than those who took up arms.

And so I say this plainly: the parade Trump proposes is not a patriotic celebration. It is a distortion—a loud, gaudy performance foreign to the American character and history.

You know well, Marc, that this country was founded in defiance of monarchy and military spectacle. George Washington, after leading the Continental Army to victory, could have claimed the trappings of a king. Instead, he resigned his commission. That act was not just a personal gesture—it set the tone for civilian control of the military and the humble bearing of American leadership.

During my presidency, I could have ordered such parades. I did not. Not out of shyness, but because such displays reek of authoritarianism. I had seen, with my own eyes, the consequences of regimes that relied on military theater to maintain legitimacy. I watched Hitler’s goose-stepping battalions and Stalin’s choreographed might. I helped bury the bodies they left behind.

In America, we do not measure strength in columns of tanks. Our power is moral, constitutional, civic. It lies in the peaceful transfer of power, the ballot box, the rights of the individual. A military parade like the one Mr. Trump proposes—featuring 150 armored vehicles, 50 helicopters, seven military bands, and 6,600 soldiers—is not about America’s values. It’s about his own.

And let’s not pretend otherwise. This is not the honoring of a military tradition; it’s the flattery of a man who once called American war dead “losers” and “suckers.” He refused to stand in the rain to honor fallen Marines in France. He mocked Senator John McCain for being captured. He dodged the draft with claims of bone spurs. Such a man has no right to wrap himself in the dignity of our armed forces, let alone use them as pageantry.

I think of the men I commanded in Europe—young, scared, resolute. They did not fight so a president could use their successors as window dressing for his birthday. They fought so we could have a country where no leader would ever dare to do such a thing. Here I am with those courageous young men.

Now, I understand patriotism. I believe in celebrating the Army. But genuine patriotism is never loud. It doesn’t roar down the avenue in formation. It stands quietly in cemeteries. It kneels in gratitude. It lives in the homes of parents who raised soldiers and in the hearts of civilians like you, Marc, who fight with words and reason instead of rifles.

Trump’s parade, by contrast, politicizes the military. It turns troops into props. It sends a message not of democratic resolve, but of intimidation and insecurity. It suggests that America needs to “prove” its strength by showing off weapons of war—not in battle, not in peacekeeping, but in self-congratulation.

Do you remember, Marc, what I said in my farewell address? I warned of the military-industrial complex—not merely as an economic concern, but as a mindset that could overwhelm our civic identity. What we see today is a natural extension of that warning: a former president seeking to fuse personal power with martial glory. That path leads away from the republic.

And look at the cost. The disruption to military readiness. The strain on budgets. The hours lost to rehearsals and logistics. Not for strategy. Not for national defense. But for optics. All for a man whose patriotism runs no deeper than a campaign rally.

There is another cost, too—the erosion of trust. The more we allow soldiers to be paraded in the streets for political purposes, the less secure our democracy becomes. In healthy republics, the military stays out of politics. That line is sacred. Trump seeks to trample it with tanks.

You know this instinctively, Marc. You’ve spent your life practicing law and teaching generations to revere the separation of powers, the Bill of Rights, the majesty of civilian leadership. This parade offends those very principles. And it offends the memory of every soldier who died believing this country was different from those that glorify war.

Let me tell you something I remember well. In 1953, during my inauguration, we had a ceremony, not a spectacle. It was simple, restrained, respectful. Because America didn’t need to prove anything with artillery. We had just won a world war. We had rebuilt Europe. We stood for freedom and decency. We didn’t need tanks to remind the world who we were.

We still don’t.

Let me close by saying this: history will not be kind to demagogues. It will remember their vanity, but it will revere those who stood for something greater. If Americans raise their eyebrows at this parade—or better yet, turn their backs—they will send a message that outlasts any helicopter flyover.

Marc, I hope you’ll write, speak, protest. Remind your fellow citizens that democracy is a quiet thing, but a strong one. And that real strength is measured not in metal, but in morals.

With enduring respect,

Dwight D. Eisenhower

President of the United States (1953–1961)

General of the Army