Washington, DC – Tanks are coming to the streets of the United States capital.

Twenty-eight 61-tonne Abrams battle tanks, to be exact, as well as a fleet of 56 armoured Stryker and Bradley fighting vehicles, a flock of artillery launchers, 6,600 US troops, 34 horses – plus two mules. And a dog.

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It is all part of the military celebration on Saturday that has been kicked into overdrive by the administration of US President Donald Trump in recent weeks.

June 14 marks the 250th birthday of the US Army and, conspicuously, Trump’s 79th birthday. The US president has promised a parade of “thundering tanks and breathtaking flyovers will roar through our capital city” that will be simply “unforgettable”.

The event comes nearly six months into Trump’s second term, during which he has sought to test the limits of presidential power and his legal authority to employ the military as law enforcement force within the US. That was further exemplified in this week’s deployment of the US National Guard and Marines to protests against his immigration policies in California.

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So, who is the audience for Trump’s military parade? And what message will it send?

“Obviously, when so much money and resources are put towards an event like a military parade that coincides with a birthday, it must be for a reason,” Irene Gammel, a professor and historian at the Toronto Metropolitan University, told Al Jazeera.

“This will be a grandiose spectacle. It will be choreographed and it will be symbolically charged,” she said.

‘America loves a parade’

Trump’s desire for a flashy military parade, with US war-fighting hardware on full display, has been well documented. It traces back to his attendance at France’s 2017 Bastille Day procession, after which, he said, “We’re going to have to try and top it.”

Various reports have since detailed the first-term pushback from defence officials, who argued such a cavalcade would constitute an uncomfortable merger of partisan politics and military might.

One official, then-Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Paul Selva, even directly warned Trump that such parades were “what dictators do”, according to a 2022 book published by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser.

To be sure, according to Barbara Perry, a presidential historian at the University of Virginia, parades are hardly a rarity in either US civilian or military culture, regularly planned to mark national holidays, local triumphs or historical events. It’s right from the “American songbook”, she added, pointing to the 1932 Harry Richman classic, I Love a Parade.

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But, in addition to the two mules and dog – present as part of the Army’s cavalry division, the procession planned for Saturday stands apart for several other reasons.

While showing off military assets was more common for presidents during the Cold War, the practice has not been regularly performed for decades. Similar parades have been typically planned to mark US victories, or at the very least the end of involvement, in foreign conflicts, Perry noted, as was the case in the most recent comparison commemorating the end of the Gulf War in 1991.

Holding a parade on the president’s birthday, regardless of the overlapping Army anniversary, Perry said, also “tends towards the authoritarian”.

“I feel this takes us from a movement of more innocent patriotism to a show of military might that is not only for enemies abroad, but in the minds of the administration, those within,” Perry said.

“It further moves towards a cult of personality by having it fall on the president’s birthday,” she added. “I’m sure any president would have celebrated this anniversary of the founding of the US Army, but not in this way.”

‘Personal police force’

Already criticised by some observers, including top Democratic lawmakers and a handful of veterans groups, as a tribute to the “egoist-in-chief”, Trump’s decision this week to deploy the National Guard to the Los Angeles protests without the consent of the state’s governor, and his subsequent move to send the Marines to the city, has cast a long shadow over the upcoming pageantry.

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Trump has, so far, not invoked the Insurrection Act of 1807, which would allow the military to take direct part in domestic law enforcement. But his actions have already sent a message of force that transforms the optics of Saturday’s parade, according to Marjorie Cohn, a professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego and former president of the US National Lawyers Guild.

Prior to sending Marines to California, Trump had already tapped the military to support his hardline immigration policies, including sending Marines to the southern border to support federal agents.

“Trump considers the US military to be his personal police force, as he seeks to use it to ‘secure’ the southern border and suppress domestic protests against his inhumane policies,” Cohn told Al Jazeera. “He has considered invoking the Insurrection Act, albeit illegally, to facilitate this agenda.”

Trump’s approach to the military dovetails with his aggressive stress testing of executive power, which he has sought to use to transform both federal government and civil society, particularly when it comes to education, healthcare, state rights, immigrant civil liberties, and trade with foreign partners.

“He is speaking not just to the US, but to the world as well,” Cohn said, framing the parade as part of Trump’s wider mission to cast “himself as the most powerful person in the world”.

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For his part, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth indicated the deployment of National Guard troops in California, which local officials have decried as an unnecessary escalation, could be part of a wider pivot in domestic military strategy.

“I think we’re entering another phase, especially under President Trump with his focus on the homeland, where the National Guard and Reserves become a critical component of how we secure that homeland,” Hegseth said during a congressional hearing on Tuesday.

Soon after, Trump promised a broad – and muscular – crackdown on planned constitutionally protected protests on the day of the parade.

“For those people that want to protest, they’re going to be met with very big force,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, as he described those who planned to demonstrate as “people that hate our country”.

‘Seizing on an opportunity’

Amid the criticism, the White House has downplayed the fact that Saturday’s spectacle also falls on Trump’s birthday. The Pentagon has said there are no plans to acknowledge the personal milestone or to sing Happy Birthday to the president.

White House official Vince Haley previously said the programme “will be a fitting tribute to the service, sacrifice, and selflessness of the brave men and women who have worn the uniform and devoted their lives to defending the greatest experiment in liberty known to man”.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Mike Lyons, a retired US Army major and military analyst, also sided with the White House’s stance that criticism of the parade has been overblown.

“All Trump is doing is seizing on an opportunity to mark 250 years of the Army,” Lyons said. “Whether it’s his birthday or not, that’s just a trolling issue for the people who hate him.”

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Lyons noted that military equipment is regularly put on display at events “inside the wire”, using a term for military bases both in the US and abroad. He drew a distinction between the plans for Saturday and the notorious military parades held in North Korea, often used to unveil otherwise secret military advancements.

“It’s not a sign of a dictator trying to project power, because we’re not going to be a North Korea and roll out the latest armed missile, there’s no secret equipment rolling out,” Lyons said.

“It’s just a celebration that gives the normal citizen an opportunity to see what this equipment looks like up close.”

‘The message is clear enough’

Trump and his administration have also played down the price tag of the event, estimated to be between $25m and $45m, but subject to rise based on the damage the military equipment causes to the streets of the capital.

Officials have characterised the spending as in line with the administration’s ambition of cutting spending on federal civilian services, while surging military funding, including putting forward a historically high $1 trillion defence budget.

Trump has dismissed the price tag as “peanuts compared to the value of doing it”.

Toronto Metropolitan University’s Gammel also agreed that the parade could have immense value, not in a commemorative capacity, but as a particularly powerful political tool.

The event is fertile ground to shore up not just Trump’s domestic base, but also one-time supporters on the fence over the divisive first months of his second term, she told Al Jazeera.

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Wrapped in military imagery considered sacrosanct to many segments of the US population, the event will be ready-made for an online audience to hit at a “very emotional level”, Gammel said.

Those images will help to “naturalise values not only around military dominance, but also values that conjoin Trump’s personal image with the military and with state power. That, to me, is particularly dangerous in all of this”.

“At a time when we have so many controversial elements being dismantled in the democratic system, all Trump needs to do is be present,” she added.

“We don’t need to sing Happy Birthday. I think the message is clear enough”.