Can we call Trump's cancellation of his Trump Victory Parade a win for the good guys? Or was this just a self-inflicted wound that finally had to be staunched due to excessive financial bleeding? Be you pacifist or warmonger, Americans of all stripes largely agreed that a military parade celebrating nothing but the childish whims of a non-veteran commander in a chief would be a supreme waste of taxpayer money, and an insult to the armed forces’ actual responsibilities. In light of the president’s rock-bottom popularity and mounting peril in the face of the Russia probe, this exercise was always what it looked like: a ploy by an unpopular and unfit president to wrap himself in the sacrifice and bravery of American servicemen and -women.

Once the estimates of its cost escalated from $12 million to $92 million, reality at long last rained on this parade. This being the Trump administration, the president has done what he can to extricate himself from this stupid idea with his usual grace and tact, falsely blaming the high costs on attempts by Washington, D.C. officials to gouge the federal government. You need look no further than the fact that only 4% of D.C. voters cast their votes for Trump, and that its mayor is an African-American woman, to see that a sour, race-baiting response by the president to the demise of his parade plan under its own weight was pretty much inevitable. We also need to give a shout out to the president's claim that if there's a cheaper parade in the future, the money saved can be spent on buying more fighter jets. Huh? Even the most die-hard Trump supporter should feel a bit queasy about this delusionary sense of how the government "saves" money: propose outlandish, expensive ideas; cancel them; claim the non-existent costs as massive savings for the taxpayer.

Just as the parade began as a scam that claimed to celebrate the military while in reality aggrandizing the president, so it ends as a scam, with the president using the cancellation to propound insane budgetary ideas and blame anyone but himself for this predictable fiasco.