During an appearance on NBC News' Meet the Press on Sunday, Kentucky Republican Rand Paul again criticized MAGA Republican President Donald Trump’s military parade that took place the day before.
Days before the parade, in a June 10 NBC interview, Paul said:
"[I've] never been a big fan of goose-stepping soldiers in big tanks and missiles rolling down the street."
"I’m not sure what the actual expense of it is, but I’m not really, you know, we were always different than, you know, the images you saw in the Soviet Union and North Korea. We were proud not to be that."
Paul echoed the same sentiments after the parade, telling Meet the Press host Kristen Welker:
"I’ve just never liked the idea of the parade, because I grew up in the ’70s and ’80s, and the only parades I can remember are Soviet parades for the most part, or North Korean parades. And the parades I remember from our history were different."
You can see a clip of the interview here:
Paul stated:
"We were rejoicing the end of war, we were rejoicing our soldiers coming home, and that absolutely ought to be commemorated, discussed every year—Memorial Day, Veterans Day—but just, we never glorified weapons so much."
"I'm just not a big fan."
Paul, a Tea Party libertarian-leaning Republican, added:
"We're $2 trillion in the hole and just an additional cost like this, I'm not for it."
While reactions to Paul's comments drew more agreement from across the political spectrum than one might expect...
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...MAGA minions, like Laura Loomer, were positively apoplectic over Paul's criticism.
Paul was called unpatriotic and a RINO, among other things.
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One Trump supporter even suggested Russia should be the model the United States follows.
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Turnout was sparse for Trump's parade on Saturday, which drew mockery from his critics.
While the administration claimed 250,000 people were in attendance, independent estimates put the total far lower than the 200,000 that were originally planned for. Large sections of the route had no spectators or sparse groupings of people. Stands set up for the event were caught on camera sitting mostly empty.
Meanwhile, No Kings protests opposing Trump held on the same day drew an estimated 4 to 5 million people—over 1% of the nation's population—in cities and small towns across the United States.
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