‘Fox & Friends’ Shocked at Critics of Trump’s Fourth of July Plans: Seeing Tanks ‘Gets You Fired Up’

‘Fox & Friends’ Shocked at Critics of Trump’s Fourth of July Plans: Seeing Tanks ‘Gets You Fired Up’

The crew of Fox & Friends is fired up for the Fourth of July.

The curvy couch denizens spent part of Wednesday morning wowing over the excitement of seeing a couple of surplus tanks and armored personnel carriers being toted through the streets of Washington, D.C. for the yearly festival on the Mall.

Or as Ainsley Earhardt put it:

“When you see those tanks rolling into your city, down into D.C., it gets you fired up, it gets you excited because you think about our military. And that represents America.”

But she could not believe there are critics who think it is a waste of resources and money to put on a military display, or who find it distasteful and partisan to have President Trump ordering the American military to parade around in an impotent show of force like some sort of authoritarian strongman:

“But there are critics! You have so many critics out there saying ‘Uh, it’s going to ruin the sidewalks. It’s gonna damage our roads. I’m like, what??”

There is concern that the streets of the capital are not strong enough to withstand 60-ton tanks, whose treads might chew up the asphalt. Especially if it is a hot enough day to soften the asphalt already. But what are the chances of a day that hot, it’s only July in Washington, D.C.

The most priceless moment of pretending to not understand the criticisms also came from Earhardt. After playing clips of various commentators complaining about Trump hijacking the holiday celebration to put himself front and center in a way that past presidents have studiously avoided, Earhardt said:

“What would they say if President Obama had done this, had brought in tanks?”

President Obama was known to spend the Fourth of July hosting military families on the lawn at the White House for cookouts and viewing of the annual fireworks, not for giving televised speeches from the Lincoln Memorial in front of a VIP section filled with his supporters and political donors. It wouldn’t have occurred to him to make it a military parade.

But more than that, we know what the critics would have said if Obama had ordered up this sort of celebration. Conservatives who used to keep a running count of all the times Obama used the pronoun “I” in his speeches to prove how self-centered he was would have accused him of making the national holiday all about himself instead of The Troops. The more paranoid would have had days or weeks of stories claiming that Obama had ordered dozens of tanks into the city as the first step in some sort of plot to turn America into a dictatorship. The GOP-led Congress would have ordered investigations. Louie Gohmert’s head would have all but exploded.

It’s as if no one at Fox remembers the right-wing freakout over the Jade Helm military exercises during the Obama administration.

Watch the video above, via Fox News.

Gary Legum

Gary Legum has written about politics and culture for Independent Journal Review, Salon, The Daily Beast, Wonkette, AlterNet and McSweeney's, among others. He currently lives in his native state of Virginia.

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