He Kept the Good Part

Today the president dropped the Anti-Weaponization Fund.

Two senior administration officials told Axios it's dead. "This has become a distraction," one of them said. A federal judge blocked it Friday. A second judge used the word "fraud" in an order directed at the president in the underlying case. Republican senators were lining up against it. Speaker Johnson was raising it in a White House meeting. So the president, a man who never retreats, retreated.

Here is what he kept.

Buried in a hyperlink added quietly to Monday's original DOJ press release, with no announcement and no fanfare, are terms stating the government is "FOREVER BARRED and PRECLUDED" from bringing any claims against Trump, his family, or his businesses for any past tax issues, up to the date of the settlement. The $1.8 billion fund is gone. The permanent immunity from every tax question the federal government ever had about the Trump family is still in place. He sued the IRS for $10 billion, settled for a slush fund he knew would get blocked, and walked away with the thing he actually needed. Nobody is talking about that part today. Everyone is talking about the retreat.

That is not a retreat. That is a magician dropping the handkerchief.

Now for the part that nobody wrote out loud this weekend.

The president's America 250 concert fell apart after every performer except Vanilla Ice pulled out. Most of the artists shared the same booking agent, a man named Jeff Epstein of Universal Attractions, who did not respond to requests for comment. In a week where Jeffrey Epstein was the loudest name in American politics, the booking agent for the president's birthday concert is also named Jeff Epstein. This is not a joke. This is the public record.

Trump's response on Truth Social was to call the artists "overpriced singers who nobody wants to hear" and suggest replacing the whole thing with a giant MAGA rally. America's 250th birthday. The nation that produced Duke Ellington, Johnny Cash, Aretha Franklin, Bruce Springsteen, and Beyonce. Vanilla Ice and a rally.

He kept the immunity. He lost the concert. He still has the UFC fight on the South Lawn, the Kennedy Center fight in court, and Vanilla Ice.

Happy Monday.

-- Barron St. John