Weapons as Props, Warriors as Roadies: Brandon Bell’s Deadpan Photos Call Out Massive Effort Behind Trump’s Military Parade

Brandon Bell’s documentary-style news photographs tell the story with ruthless clarity: soldiers, like parcel workers, load freight onto trains bound for Washington, D.C. The occasion? A birthday party.

The images reveal the overwhelming scale of the operation—dozens of tanks stretching across multiple rail lines. What might be framed as a patriotic display instead becomes a portrait of military-industrial excess, staged for political theater. This is documentary work at its most incisive. There are no dramatic angles or heroic lighting—just the routine of loading procedures, where soldiers are nearly lost amid the machinery they serve.

Bell’s images frame the execution of autocratic whim: soldiers directing traffic, hoisting massive hardware, transforming instruments of war into parade props. The sterile organization feels more like factory assembly than combat readiness, quietly questioning the logic of the fanfare.

Through Bell’s lens, the outrageness emerges through banality. These photographs are damning because they capture the mechanics of despotic display with robotic precision.

An aerial shot of a Chinook helicopter dangling a jeep against an empty sky transforms military might into absurd stagecraft—the blankness of the frame clueing the larger void of the exercise.

Bell’s elevated railway perspective reveals the true obscenity: endless rows of tanks stretching to the horizon like a monstrous conveyor belt, each one representing millions of taxpayer dollars conscripted for one man’s fantasy.

On the ground, soldiers dwarfed by the machinery, scattered across the railway yard like toy figures, embody the cost in human effort.

These aren’t warriors; they’re logistics coordinators for a vanity project. The soldier directing traffic with his yellow safety vest, surrounded by tanks that could level city blocks, embodies the perverse transformation of defense power into carnival management.

Perched atop flatbed cars loaded with tank chains and equipment, soldiers gesture with arms outstretched like conductors of this mechanical pageant—the most quirky scenes resembling a Wes Anderson set piece.

If Russia can roll tanks through Red Square and China can march missiles past Tiananmen, why shouldn’t America’s narcissist-in-chief have his turn? This June 14th extravaganza celebrates the Army’s 250th anniversary—pure coincidence, surely, that it’s also the president’s 79th birthday.

Trump’s parade obsession dates to his first term, when a similar spectacle was scrapped after costs ballooned to $92 million. This time, the festivities are budgeted at $25-45 million (plus $16 million for street repairs), which he calls “peanuts.” Of course, these estimates are as reliable as DOGE math.

These photos will prove prophetic. Future historians won’t need dramatic imagery or propaganda—they’ll have Bell’s evidence: the mundane machinery of democratic collapse. Sometimes it’s the most unassuming images that prove most damning.

Photos: Brandon Bell/Getty Images. Original caption: U.S. Army soldiers load military tanks onto trains en route to Washington D.C., from Fort Cavazos on May 22, 2025 in Killeen, Texas. The Texas U.S. Army is preparing to send 150 military vehicles to Washington, D.C. for the 250th anniversary of the June Military Parade.