The Kennedy Center Embarrassed Trump, so Now He Needs to Destroy It
In retrospect, the artistic director quitting 12 days after he was hired was probably a bad sign.
Photo via Unsplash, Clay Elliot Splinter kennedy center
As soon as artists and performers began canceling their scheduled Kennedy Center engagements en masse following President Donald Trump’s historically self-aggrandizing move to add his own name to the building, we probably should have figured that the single most likely outcome would be that Trump would immediately begin tracing his fat fingers over a glowing, red self-destruct button for the center, which has served the American public for 55 years since its opening in 1971. These institutions, after all, are not allowed to make Donald Trump feel embarrassed. You do that, and Trump will bulldoze your historic site into the ground in order to avoid having to face the mere fact that he is deeply disliked by the majority of Americans. We’re talking about the same guy here who is attempting to renovate or revamp seemingly every historic landmark in Washington D.C. simultaneously to add references to his own glorification. He’s even seized control of the city’s three public golf courses! Of course his first move when performers defied him at the Kennedy Center would be to simply close the center down for two years, the news of which broke last night.
Announced via Truth Social in classically rambling Trump fashion, and sprinkled with his trademark random capitalizations, the President said the following as he attempted to find a vaguely plausible rationale for the decision:
I have determined that The Trump Kennedy Center, if temporarily closed for Construction, Revitalization, and Complete Rebuilding, can be, without question, the finest Performing Arts Facility of its kind, anywhere in the World. In other words, if we don’t close, the quality of Construction will not be nearly as good, and the time to completion, because of interruptions with Audiences from the many Events using the Facility, will be much longer. The temporary closure will produce a much faster and higher quality result!
This, despite Trump claiming as recently as October that the center would not close for planned renovations. Side note: How horrifying is it that the President of the United States doesn’t have even a passing familiarity with English grammar? When Donald Trump capitalizes words such as “Events,” or “Audiences” or “Facility” above, what exactly does he believe that achieves or implies? Why not capitalize literally any of the other words as well? How does he decide where to apply those capitals, anyway? The mind reels at the possibilities.
Cancelations at the Kennedy Center in recent weeks have included the likes of composer Philip Glass canceling a performance of his Symphony No. 15 “Lincoln,” which had been scheduled for June. In a press statement, Glass wrote that “Symphony No. 15 is a portrait of Abraham Lincoln, and the values of the Kennedy Center today are in direct conflict with the message of the Symphony. Therefore, I feel an obligation to withdraw this Symphony premiere from the Kennedy Center under its current leadership.” The many cancelations have also included the likes of soprano Renée Fleming, the Brentano Quartet, the Seattle Children’s Theatre, the Martha Graham Dance Company, and The Washington National Opera, which announced it would be finding a new home after half a century at the center. But don’t worry: Director Brett Ratner’s Melania still played at the center, only a day after new photos surfaced of the disgraced Hollywood director with a young woman and Jeffrey Epstein. Now that’s classiness worthy of the first lady.
The director of Melania movie
— Laleh Khalili (@lalehkhalili.bsky.social) Jan 31, 2026 at 1:59 PM
In retrospect, it was probably a bad sign last week that Kevin Couch, the newly announced Head of Artistic Programming for the Kennedy Center, whose board of directors are now a hand-picked squad of Trump goons, resigned from the position after only 12 days–just barely more than one Scaramucci, in fact. Kennedy Center President and Trump flunky Ric Grenell had spent most of those 12 days lashing out at artists online for daring to cancel their shows, calling anyone who chose not to perform at the center “far-left political activists” and insisting that “boycotting the arts to show you support the arts is a form of derangement syndrome.”
There’s also a certain irony, of course, to the fact that Trump will now shutter the center to undergo largely unknown but no doubt expensive renovation, while simultaneously going after Fed chairman Jerome Powell on invented accusations of fiscal mismanagement in the renovations of the Federal Reserve headquarters. Just another day at the old hypocrisy races.
Various public figures connected to former President John F. Kennedy have decried Trump’s attempts to insert himself into the center’s legacy, such as Maria Shriver, who said “It is beyond wild that he would think adding his name in front of President Kennedy’s name is acceptable. It is not.” Kennedy niece Kerry Kennedy, meanwhile, has vowed that she will “grab a pickaxe” and remove Trump’s name from the building as soon as he (hopefully) is out of office once again. Congressional Democrats, meanwhile, have put out statements of support for the performers canceling their appearances at the now compromised center.
stealing from Reddit
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) Feb 1, 2026 at 8:53 PM
“Let’s be clear: remodeling the premises will not restore the Kennedy Center to what it was,” said Rep. Joyce Beatty (OH). “A return to artistic independence will. America’s artists are rejecting this attempted takeover, and the administration knows it.”
One day, the Kennedy Center will presumably be open again–we wouldn’t be surprised if “renovations” ultimately take exactly as long to finish as Trump calculates his flunkies will need to fully fill its schedule with only MAGA-friendly performers. As in so many other dimensions of Trump’s presidency, though, by that point the damage will no doubt already have been done. How many other institutions will the man find time to wreck in the next three years?
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