The Daily Run Down

22 May, 2026

[Transcript edit for clarity, flow and length]

Senate Republicans are now considering dropping the proposed $1 billion security package tied to Donald’s ballroom project after the measure failed to gain enough support, even from Republicans on Capitol Hill. At the same time, divisions within the Republican Party are growing over the nearly $1.8 billion so called anti weaponization fund, which is nothing more than a slush fund by another name.

The fund exists because Donald agreed to drop his frivolous $10 billion lawsuit against his own Internal Revenue Service. In exchange, the Department of Justice, under acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, created a taxpayer funded compensation pool for people claiming the Biden administration weaponized the government against them.

According to Blanche, that could potentially include January 6th defendants who assaulted police officers during the attack on the Capitol and who have already been pardoned by Donald. Democrats are attempting to block or restrict those payments, particularly if they go to people who committed violence against Capitol Police officers or participated in the insurrection against the United States government on January 6th, 2021.

On Wednesday, Donald addressed the growing controversy.

Yeah. Well, what happened is I was suing IRS for a lot of different reasons. One of the reasons is they released my tax returns, which they’re not allowed to do. Now they showed I pay a lot of tax. I may even release my current returns because they show I pay a lot of money, but they’re not supposed to do that…I guess, a private firm, but it released them to a lot of the fake news and the fake news went, and you’re just not allowed to do that… I wasn’t involved in the settlement. I could have been involved, but I didn’t choose to be.

Also, the anti-weaponization of people. I mean, people were destroyed. They went to jail. Their families were ruined. They committed suicide. All the Biden administration and the Obama administration, both of them. I mean, the Obama administration started it. The Biden administration was horrible in terms of what they’ve done to people. It was the most violent thing I’ve ever seen in politics.

Punishing people who engaged in an insurrection against the United States government, attacked Capitol Police officers, built gallows outside the Capitol, threatened to hang Mike Pence, and hunted for members of Congress is now considered “violent” according to Donald Trump. The violence, apparently, was not what they did. The violence was that they faced consequences for it.

Todd Blanche was later asked directly by CNN whether he was comfortable with individuals who assaulted police officers receiving taxpayer payouts through the fund.

This is what Todd Blanche said:

Just to be clear, people that hurt police get money all the time. There’s a process where if you believe your rights were violated, you can apply for funds, you can sue, you can file a claim, you can go to court. In some of those cases, the state, the government, the federal government settles those cases. It’s abhorrent to ever touch a law enforcement officer, which is why anytime anybody does that and it’s a federal officer we’ll prosecute them. But that’s a completely different question with whether an individual is allowed to apply for a claim.

In other words, Todd Blanche is perfectly comfortable with people who brutalized police officers receiving taxpayer money because the entire purpose of this deeply corrupt slush fund is to financially benefit Donald’s political allies.

The Republican Party is no longer the party of law enforcement. It is the party of protecting, defending, and enriching anybody loyal to Donald Trump. Tragically, that now includes the acting Attorney General of the United States.

Jay Clayton, Donald’s former SEC chairman and now United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, also appeared on CNBC and insisted that everyone should simply move on.

I don’t think we’re going to be talking about this issue in a week because the American people are going to say, look, they leaked his tax returns. They tried to name and shame him. They tried to destroy him. We resolved that. As I read the settlement, the audit going forward, the tax returns that are filed going forward are subject to the same scrutiny as anybody else.

It’s in the past.

What I love is everybody’s like, “Let’s just move on.” And then when we move on, people are like, “I don’t like that we’re moving on.”

The only people who want to move on are Donald and the people benefiting from this corruption because they understand perfectly well that this may be one of the most corrupt arrangements in modern American history. Most Americans do not want to “move on” from the fact that taxpayer money is being diverted into a nearly $2 billion slush fund that could reward criminals and political loyalists.

And the corruption does not end there. Part of the agreement reportedly prevents Donald and his adult children from being audited moving forward. Past audits are also reportedly being dropped despite the IRS explicitly stating that Donald potentially owes more than $100 million in unpaid taxes. Guess what will never be collected.

Even as House Speaker Mike Johnson promises Republicans will ultimately pass whatever version of the slush fund legislation Donald wants, there are signs of resistance from within the Republican Party itself. Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy has raised concerns. Senate Majority Leader John Thune admitted Republicans are struggling with votes behind the scenes.

North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis put it even more bluntly.

It will invariably put us in a position where your taxpayer dollars and my taxpayer dollars could potentially compensate someone who assaulted a police officer, admitted their guilt, got convicted, got pardoned and now we’re going to pay them for that. That’s absurd. The American people are going to reject this out of hand. When you take money from me to give to a purpose that I vehemently disagree with, that’s tyranny and that’s what that account is.

That is a Republican senator describing Donald’s proposal as tyranny. And honestly, he is right. These people were punished because they committed actual crimes against the United States government, against Capitol Police officers, and against the American people. If they lost money, relationships, or years of their lives because of those crimes, that responsibility belongs to them. Now they are not only being absolved, they are potentially being rewarded.

At the same time, the Trump regime appears increasingly eager to expand its foreign confrontations. Following its disastrous and unconstitutional war of choice against Iran, the administration now seems to be escalating tensions with Cuba.

The United States has tightened the blockade around the island, worsening an ongoing energy crisis that has left large portions of Cuba without reliable electricity for months. The administration has now indicted former Cuban leader Raúl Castro, who is ninety four years old, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio is openly describing Cuba as a national security threat.

Cuba not only has weapons that they’ve acquired from Russia and China over the years, but they also host Russian and Chinese intelligence presence in their country. Cuba’s always posed a national security threat to the United States. They have been one of the leading sponsors of terrorism in the region. The other thing that poses a threat to the national security of the United States is to have a failed state ninety miles from our shores run by friends of our adversaries.

I am no fan of the Cuban government, but if Cuba is supposedly such a major military threat, why is the administration simultaneously maintaining policies that leave the country economically devastated and struggling to maintain basic infrastructure? The logic makes no sense because the point is not truth. The point is fear.

And the same pattern is now playing out with Iran. Today, Iran’s Supreme Leader rejected one of the central demands of the United States and Israel by insisting that Iran’s near weapons grade enriched uranium remain inside the country. In other words, one of Donald’s central justifications for this war has completely collapsed.

Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear deal had successfully constrained Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Donald destroyed that agreement for no legitimate reason. Iran then resumed advancing its nuclear program. Now, after this war, Iran is stronger financially, more politically entrenched, and further advanced in its nuclear development than it was before.

The United States will have gained nothing.

And all of it, once again, comes back to Donald Trump.