ANDREW LIMBONG, HOST:
Last weekend was a split-screen moment in America. President Trump presided over a parade celebrating the Army's 250th birthday. Meanwhile, millions across the country gathered to protest Trump and the parade as authoritarian. The two events drew vastly different participants. Frank Langfitt, NPR's roving national correspondent, went to both, and he was surprised by some of the things he found, and he's with us to share some of those observations for this week's Reporter's Notebook. Hey, Frank.
FRANK LANGFITT, BYLINE: Hey, Andrew.
LIMBONG: All right, so what are some of the things that strike you as you think back about how you set out to cover both of these events?
LANGFITT: Yeah, well, you know, one of the things leading into the parade and the protest - you remember there was concern, a fair bit of concern, about violence. Here at NPR, we were even having conversations about safety for some of us who were going to go out and cover the day's events. But in the end, Andrew, both sides showed something that I think is kind of in short supply these days in the country, and that's restraint. You know, the people who organized No Kings, those protests against Trump, decided not to rally in D.C. They knew that it could be misconstrued as a protest against the Army and could have led to clashes.
And the people who attended the parade, from what I saw, they were also restrained. Let me give you an example. I met a guy named Peter Sallinger. He's 22. He went to the military parade, but he went there to protest it. And so he was sitting on the lawn near the Washington Monument. He's holding this No Kings sign, and this is what he first told me when we talked.
PETER SALLINGER: I don't think it's American to have a military parade that costs millions of dollars on a president's birthday.
LANGFITT: Well, why do you think it's un-American?
SALLINGER: I don't think we celebrate our presidents by marching through streets and goose-stepping.
LIMBONG: Did people largely leave him alone?
LANGFITT: They did. Sallinger also was savvy about it, Andrew. He wore this American flag bandana around his head, signaling his own patriotism. And afterwards, I was kind of curious to hear how the rest of the day went, so I called him, and he said there was a guy who hovered nearby, kind of like a guardian angel, looking after him. There were other people who gave him fist bumps. He did get some snide comments. And then Sallinger shared this really interesting exchange he had. One guy comes up to him kind of pretty hot and angry, demanding to know who had paid Sallinger to come to the protest. And this is how Sallinger described it.
SALLINGER: I sort of said, you know, I'm just here exercising my rights to free speech. He understood that. He understood when I said that it was my right as an American to be there. I think that maybe appealed to some of his politics. And then he really settled down when I said that I worked in finance, and he said, oh, you know, my son works in finance.
LIMBONG: All right, well, that's kind of funny that they both found some common bond in finance. Did that symbolize anything to you? Was that an example of - I don't want to be like Pollyanna, but, like, a sort of, you know, commonality between Americans?
LANGFITT: I think - and I agree 100%, Andrew, not to be a Pollyanna about this at all - but the fact of the matter is, this is a country where people on either side kind of demonize each other. And then when they actually see each other and they talk, there is more in common than they imagine. And people are not the - you know, the people on the other side are not necessarily exactly what they expect, which is what you saw here with finance. I mean, this guy clearly did not expect that a protester with a No Kings sign was a hardcore capitalist in the - you know, in the business of making money.
LIMBONG: So you also went to a No Kings protest in Annapolis, the capital of Maryland. Were there any pro-Trump protesters there?
LANGFITT: Not that I saw. You know, I walked through the crowd. I photographed lots of signs, not a single pro-Trump sign. Nearly everybody there was focused on what they see as authoritarianism. In the speeches, though, there wasn't a lot about exactly how to go about doing that.
LIMBONG: Yeah. You know, I want to go back to the military parade for a second. I know you as an international correspondent - right? - globe-trotting all over the place. How do you think the military parade compares to other such events that you've covered?
LANGFITT: What was really interesting is, before this, you would remember there was all this criticism that this parade was going to look like something you'd see in China or North Korea. And you heard that from Peter Sallinger. He talked about goose-stepping. I've covered - I covered one in 1999 in Beijing. There was goose-stepping, there was missiles. It was really in your face. And it wasn't just to sort of intimidate foreign powers. It was also a message to the people of China. This was just 10 years after Tiananmen. And it was, don't mess with us.
This parade was not really like that at all. You know, the troops were not marching. Some people complained that they were kind of shuffling. And so I think that the parade itself was not what critics feared and not what Sallinger expected. At one point, it was frankly a lot more like a pep rally. Like, soldiers were driving tanks. They were waving, pumping their fists, revving the engines for the crowd. So, I got to say, it's - that's why it's so good as - you know, as a reporter to go to these things. It really - it didn't come off the way a lot of people were concerned that it might.
LIMBONG: Yeah. So what's your big takeaway from both of these events?
LANGFITT: I want to come back to this word, and that's restraint. You know, Sallinger came to protest, but he was careful to make his point quietly. Most of the parade-goers that I saw, they were really focusing on celebrating the Army, not really making it political or cheering on President Trump. And, I mean, as far as I saw, only a small percentage were actually wearing any MAGA gear. Now, Sallinger was concerned that showing up could be provocative, but in the end, he kind of found the opposite. This is what he thought.
SALLINGER: I think being face to face with people, in some ways, felt deescalatory. When you're just standing next to someone, it's really hard to come up and antagonize them, to get in a fight with them. Like, that is - that's not an easy thing to do. People don't want to do it. And so they revert to wanting to have conversations and, to some extent, understand your point of view. And that's the real type of, like, face-to-face interaction that we need to be having.
LANGFITT: I mean, obviously, this country is bitterly divided. Political violence, we're seeing, is becoming more common. And it was kind of good to see people like this guy, Sallinger, willing to take risks and spend time with a lot of people with whom he disagrees.
LIMBONG: All right. That was NPR's Frank Langfitt, who has reported from - what? - like, 50 countries from all over the world. Is that about right?
LANGFITT: Something like that, yes.
LIMBONG: Oh, my goodness. All right. NPR's Frank Langfitt. Frank, thank you so much.
LANGFITT: Happy to do it, Andrew. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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