"He kind of reamed out Hegseth for this."
President Donald Trump spent $45 million in taxpayer dollars to throw himself a huge birthday parade — and now, he's apparently mad at everyone involved for not making it more fabulous.
In an interview with the Daily Beast, Trump biographer Michael Wolff revealed that the president was none too pleased with the underwhelming pomp that marked the 250th anniversary of the Army — and, perhaps just as importantly in his mind, his birthday.
Known as much for his cultivation of insider sources as for being an unreliable narrator, Wolff's 2018 book "Fire and Fury" documented Trump's outrageous first year in the White House with aplomb and — according to some critics — a non-trivial amount of creative license. As such, we have to take what he says with a grain of salt — but given all the outrageous things this president has done and said in public, it's impossible to throw any of the biographer's claims out the window wholesale.
Take, for instance, Wolff's retelling of how Trump reacted to the jovial soldiers who marched through the streets of Washington, DC during the president's long-awaited military parade.
"He’s p*ssed off at the soldiers," the writer told the Beast. "He’s accusing them of hamming it up, and by that, he seems to mean that they were having a good time, that they were waving, that they were enjoying themselves and showing a convivial face rather than a military face."
There is, infamously, little love lost between Trump and the military. A few months before the presidential election he lost in 2020, the billionaire was quoted in The Atlantic as referring to fallen troops as "suckers" and "losers" — an alleged comment that was corroborated by John Kelly, a retired Marine general who served as Trump's longtime chief of staff during his first term.
The optics of the parade were dodgy in other ways that likely got under Trump's image-sensitive skin: one viral video showed a procession of audibly squeaky and old-fashioned-looking tanks that evoked anything but overwhelming military strength.
When looking for someone to blame for the insufficient fanfare, the president apparently turned to Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News personality who was nominated as defense secretary this year even after allegations of financial mismanagement, sexual assault, and a debilitating drinking problem.
"He kind of reamed out Hegseth for this," Wolff told the Beast. "Apparently, there was a phone call, and he said to Hegseth, 'The tone was all wrong. Why was the tone wrong? Who staged this?'"
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