The Bands Quit the President's Festival, So He Offered to Speak Instead.

There is a kind of man who books a band, watches the band quit, and decides the problem was the band. I have served that man coffee. He is at the counter right now, explaining how the Cowboys would win if the coach would just call him.

This week that man is the President.

The setup.

The President’s people are putting on a thing called Freedom 250, a concert series on the National Mall for the country’s birthday. They lined up nine acts. Inside 48 hours, five walked. The Commodores, gone. Martina McBride, gone. Bret Michaels, gone. As of this writing the committed lineup is Vanilla Ice and one of the two men from Milli Vanilli, which is its own quiet kind of honesty.

A normal host looks at that and books new acts, or eats the loss, or cancels it without a fuss. The President looked at it and saw an opening.

The post.

On Saturday he went on Truth Social and offered to do it himself. Not produce it. Perform it. He wrote that the artists were getting “the yips,” and that he might bring, and I am quoting him here, “the Number One Attraction anywhere in the World, the man who gets much larger audiences than Elvis in his prime, and he does so without a guitar,” to “take the place of these highly paid, Third Rate ‘Artists,’ and give a major speech.”

Read that twice. The plan to rescue a music festival is to remove the music and add a speech.

Bigger than Elvis.

I want to sit with the Elvis part, because it is doing a lot of work. He did not say he was as big as Elvis. He said bigger. Then, sensing the comparison might tilt toward the man holding the guitar, he noted that he manages it without one. That is a person doing the arithmetic live and deciding he comes out ahead of Elvis Presley, at a concert, by talking.

In the same post he called himself the Greatest President in History, in parentheses, GOAT, in capital letters. The parentheses are the best part. A man who needs you to know the title is widely used, by some, and tucked into a footnote.

What it is.

It is the guy at the end of the counter at one in the morning, telling you the show would be better if he were the show. The only difference is this one owns the room.