On Saturday morning in the UK, King Charles III and other members of the British royal family are expected to stand on the balcony at Buckingham Palace in London for what’s become an annual spectacle known as Trooping the Colour.

Charles, Queen Camilla, Prince William and Princess Catherine will do their royal waves and watch a parade of more than a thousand British soldiers on foot or on horseback, along with a flyover of RAF jets. The nearly 300-year Trooping the Colour has long served as a way for patriotic, pro-royal Britons to officially honor their monarch’s birthday — even if the current king’s actual birthday is months away.

Later on Saturday, America’s President Donald Trump will stage his own version of a royal military birthday parade in Washington, D.C. Critics, however, say it’s more of a “Soviet-style” extravaganza, with 60-ton M1 Abrams battle tanks and Paladin self-propelled howitzers scheduled to roll past his reviewing stand near the White House. Trump’s parade is meant to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Army but this Saturday also happens to be Flag Day, as well as Trump’s 79th birthday.

In response to Trump’s birthday parade, his opponents will stage mass “No Kings” protests in cities across the United States, including nearly a dozen communities in the Bay Area, to counter what they say is the president’s attempt to feed his ego and assert his dictatorial desires, as The Associated Press reported. Trump’s parade also comes after a tense week in modern U.S. history — after he deployed several thousand National Guard troops and Marines t o Los Angeles in response to mostly peaceful protests against ICE immigration raids in that city.

The national organizers of the “No Kings” protests say their events will be a way for everyday Americans to stand up for democracy and against what they call the authoritarian actions of the Trump administration, The Associated Press reported. Protesters have called for Trump to be “dethroned” as they compare his actions to that of a king or a strongman and not a democratically elected president.

Trump has said that he got the idea for a military parade during his first administration after attending France’s Bastille Day parade in 2017, according to Axios. Trump, though, canceled plans for a military parade in 2018 after costs soared to $92 million, and city officials winced at the thought of heavy military equipment rolling through D.C. streets.

Even if Trump said he was inspired by France’s Bastille Day parade, he’s also known to be a big admirer of the British royal family and the trappings of the 1,000-year-old institution that they represent. Trump family biographers also have written about how he and especially his daughter Ivanka Trump have always wanted to present themselves an American royal family.

While the timing of Trump’s parade and Charles’ Trooping the Colour birthday celebration may be a coincidence, the comparisons are inevitable, with the U.S. president likewise using a military event to assert his role as head of state, as Vanity Fair writer Erin Vanderhoof said.

Still, a military parade carries different connotations in modern Britain than in the United States, with Vanderhoof saying that “the purposes of the two parades couldn’t be more different.” While both events will include a military flypast, Trooping the Colour offers a more old-fashioned sense of pageantry with those soldiers on horseback, dressed in brightly colored ceremonial uniforms and elaborate headgear.

Trump’s parade on the other hand, with its tanks and rocket launchers, “will foreground modernity and military might,” Vanderhoof said. This spectacle also has been orchestrated by a president who has long sought the ability to use the American military as a “blunt instrument against those he perceives to be his domestic opponents,” as author David Rothkopf wrote in the Daily Beast this week.

The Army has long planned some kind of celebration for its semiquincentennial on June 14, the Associated Press said. But in his return to power in the 2024 election, Trump decided to ratchet up the Pentagon’s plans into a full-scale military parade on his birthday. Army officials, however, have said there are no plans to actually celebrate Trump’s birthday on Saturday — he won’t be serenaded with “Happy Birthday,” for example, Vanderhoof said.

Still, Trump’s critics warn that his parade, following events in Los Angeles this week, should leave Americans asking whether their leader has “crossed a dangerous line,” Rothkopf said. It’s a line that modern British rulers, such as Charles or his late mother, Elizabeth II, would never dare cross. Even with the royal family’s centuries-long association with divine rights and imperialism, Charles and his heir, Prince William, are known to respect their place in a constitutional monarchy.

“For those who know or who have studied Trump, the events of this week are so profoundly chilling,” Rothkopf said. “Whether it is boots on the ground in Los Angeles or the polished boots that will be marching a four-mile parade route through our nation’s capital this weekend, we now have a president who sees the military as an extension of his own personal power — his most lavish and ostentatious acquisition yet.”

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