Hail Trump! Those about to weep salute thee

Well, here I am, hoist on my own petard.

My cruel mockery of Donald Trump for having only one achievement in his presidency - the tax cut he arranged to hand himself and his pals - now looks profoundly misplaced. It seems he's about to add a second. And it's - yuge.

Having seen the great Bastille Day parade down the Champs Elysées in Paris, Trump has decided that it's time to have something like that in the US too. Because, you see, he's a great admirer of the military. At least from afar.

Impressive spectacle: the Bastille Day parade
on the Champs Elysées

Why do I say, "from afar"? Because Trump was granted the opportunity to show his admiration for military service up close during the Vietnam War. Sadly, he was unable to take advantage of that opportunity because his studies obliged him to defer joining up - repeatedly. And then, by sheer bad luck, he was forced to take a further deferment on medical grounds, because of a bone spur in his foot.

For those of you who may be worried about how much suffering that bone spur caused him, it will doubtless come as a relief to learn that the problem cleared up. Even at the time, it didn't prevent him playing golf or squash.

These regrettable obstacles to the distinguished military career he would no doubt otherwise have had have in no way reduced his admiration of all things military. Indeed, he gets upset when people make questionable claims to military credit. For instance, he was clear that John McCain, Arizona Senator and a fellow Republican, who was a prisoner of the North Vietnamese for over five years, during which he resisted ill treatment and even torture, was no hero.

"He's not a war hero," he told a rally during his campaign for the Republican nomination for President, "he's a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren't captured."

He's well placed to make that kind of accusation. Trump was certainly never captured. It's true that he wasn't there to be captured, when McCain was being shot down in his warplane, but hey, when you have all those deferments inflicted on you, what can you do?

In any case, his new initiative will set everything straight. A military parade in Washington! He could take the salute, just like such Soviet leaders as Khrushchev and Brezhnev did. Those were inspirational gestures in wonderful times. And Trump can bring them back for us.

Taking the salute: Soviet chief Nikita Khrushchev, his successor 
Leonid Brezhnev framing the first Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin

A second achievement for the US President then. And one that he is prioritising. Who can question that doing so is entirely worthy of the man he is?

And what a fool I feel to have questioned the fitness of such a man for office.