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.
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.”
“The sad spin starts,” as another described it. “The highest reasonable total is only 10-20K attending.”
Even Grok, X’s in-house AI factchecking 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.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
