Updated: August 17, 8:45 a.m. EDT
President Donald Trump has been a big promoter of his planned military parade. However, new estimates place the cost of the parade at $92 million — $80 million more than the initial estimates of $12 million.
This new estimate came from a U.S. defense official who spoke to CNBC on the condition of anonymity. This official reportedly had firsthand knowledge.
Shortly after this new, more expensive estimate came out, the Department of Defense announced that the parade, which was initially slated to take place on Nov. 10, would be postponed until 2019. Defense Secretary James Mattis also denied that an official estimate of the cost had not yet been reached, and suggested that the defense official who leaked that information may have been smoking marijuana.
On Friday morning, Trump tweeted that he thought that "local politicians" in Washington D.C. had purposely put the estimate that high to block the parade because they knew that it would be a "windfall" for him. He announced that he would go to Paris to watch their military parade on Nov. 11 instead.
The local politicians who run Washington, D.C. (poorly) know a windfall when they see it. When asked to give us a price for holding a great celebratory military parade, they wanted a number so ridiculously high that I cancelled it. Never let someone hold you up! I will instead...
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 17, 2018
....attend the big parade already scheduled at Andrews Air Force Base on a different date, & go to the Paris parade, celebrating the end of the War, on November 11th. Maybe we will do something next year in D.C. when the cost comes WAY DOWN. Now we can buy some more jet fighters!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 17, 2018
The cost for the parade would reportedly be split between $50 million from the Pentagon and $42 million for other agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security.
The White House budget office had told Congress that the total cost of the parade would be somewhere between $10 million and $30 million.
It is not clear if any of this cost would go toward reimbursing the Washington, D.C., city government's cleanup or road repair. Critics of the parade have expressed concern that vehicles like the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, which weights 27.6 tons, could potentially damage Pennsylvania Avenue.
Last time there was a military parade in D.C., in 1991, there was minimal damage including tread marks left on Constitution Avenue by 67-ton M1A1 tanks. Prior to 1991, the last parade in D.C. was in 1946 to mark the end of World War II the previous year.
The defense official said that the parade would include Bradleys, as well as other armored vehicles including Strykers and M113s. However, the official insisted that analysis of the 70-ton Abrams tank found that it would not damage the streets.
On July 14, 2017, Trump attended the Bastille Day military parade in France.
In September, Trump recalled how impressed he had been by that experience.
"It was a tremendous day, and to a large extent because of what I witnessed, we may do something like that on July 4 in Washington down Pennsylvania Avenue," he said. "We're going to have to try to top it, but we have a lot of planes going over and a lot of military might, and it was really a beautiful thing to see, and representatives from different wars and different uniforms."
