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| Empty bleachers line the route of Trump's parade (YouTube) |
A spokesman for the Donald Trump administration is taking heat from the press for allegedly making an exaggerated estimate of the crowd size for Saturday's military parade in Washington, D.C. Several media observers who were present along the parade route said Steven Cheung's estimate was "not even close." Under the headline "Trump Lackey Torn Apart for Wild Claim of Giant Parade Crowd;The White House director of communications seems to be having trouble with basic arithmetic," Will Neal, of the Daily Beast, writes:
President Donald Trump’s director of communications has prompted ridicule with spurious claims over the size of the crowd at a Washington, D.C., military parade.
“Amazing. Despite the threat of rain, over 250,000 patriots showed up to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the @USArmy,” Steven Cheung posted to X on Saturday night. “God Bless the USA!” MSNBC was quick to pour water on the claim.
“That’s just not accurate, that’s not even close to accurate,” reporter Vaughn Hillyard, who was present at the event, told hosts of MSNBC’s The Weekend on Sunday.
“Just the eye of any individual who is here on the ground or looking at images or video knows that there were not 250,000 people, but that can be the White House’s position here,” he added.
Aside from a bloated crowd estimate, Cheung's statement on X raises this question: How did Cheung know that the crowd was filled with people who met his definition of a "patriot"? Did that label apply to 50 percent of the crowd, 20 percent, less than that? Do you have to attend a Trump-sponsored military parade to qualify as a patriot these days? That Cheung's goofy statement raised such questions might be one reason he took a pummeling on social media. Here's another: Going back to his work on the 2024 Trump campaign, Cheung has proven that he almost is Trump's equal when it comes to being an a-hole -- and that's a tough bar to reach. Anyone who has experience in dealing with the press, should know that if you treat reporters with disdain and hold a shaky grasp on the truth, your list of media friends is going to be mighty short. Neal writes:
Users on X eviscerated Cheung in the comments section and in reposts of his original claim. Many of them compared him to former Trump Press Secretary Sean Spicer, who was called out in 2017 for grossly inflating the number of people who’d attended the president’s first inauguration.
“Steven Cheung in his ‘Sean Spicer’ moment declared FALSELY 250K people attended Trump’s vanity parade yesterday!!” one user put it. “The lying and delusion from this Trump administration never stops!!”
“Steven Cheung has no concept of the principles of empirical induction predicated from proven observation,” another chimed in. “Steven Cheung has no ability to use inference from established facticity. Steven Cheung is a deluded fantasist with no concept of actual reality.”
A third person simply wrote: “Trump’s nutsackhead is lying again.”
A fourth person said: “Yeah right dude, and Steven Cheung is skinny too.”
That last comment might best be described with the aid of a photograph. Even Trump calls Cheung "my sumo wrestler." Cheung also could be described as a jerk, as one reporter essentially has done, according to a New Yorker account. Of course, Cheung's boss is the world's No. 1 jerk, so what should we expect from his spokesman:
Trump has always delighted in belittling opponents—Lyin’ Ted, Liddle Marco, Crooked Hillary, Sleepy Joe—and Cheung, a former spokesman for the mixed-martial-arts franchise Ultimate Fighting Championship, is a virtuoso at mimicking his boss, voicing all manner of innuendo and humiliating barbs. “He can be pretty offensive and crass online, and I think that’s a tactical thing,” one newspaper reporter who has dealt with Cheung said. “They’re a brutal operation—‘You come at us and we’re going to kick you in your fucking teeth.’ ” Cheung seems to relish playing the heel. He has also stepped in to refute accusations that the Trump movement is racist. In 2021, after Ted Lieu, a Democratic congressman from California, tweeted about the rise in hate crimes committed against Asian Americans during the Trump Administration, Cheung replied, “As an Asian American who has worked on campaigns, in government, and in the corporate world, working for President Trump and in his WH was the most inclusive environment I’ve ever encountered.”
That, of course, is coming from someone who is paid to toe the Trump line, so a reasonable person might not want to give it much credence. Daily Beast provides more details on crowd size:
“The sad spin starts,” as another described it. “The highest reasonable total is only 10-20K attending.”
Even Grok, X’s in-house AI fact-checking tool, found it hard to wrangle any logic from Cheung’s post. “Claims of over 250,000 attendees at the U.S. Army’s 250th anniversary parade in Washington, D.C., on June 14, 2025, appear exaggerated,” the program responded to a tag in the comments.
“Official permits allowed for up to 200,000 for the parade and 50,000 for the festival, but news reports suggest actual attendance was lower than expected,” it went on. “No official figures confirm the 250,000 claim, and sources like PBS and KTLA indicate turnout fell short of 200,000. Exact numbers remain unverified as of now.”
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