This has all the earmarks of some kind of drug-addled psychotic episode, but we will be charitable and assume that a few wires have merely been crossed and everything is proceeding properly. Friday’s bombshell du jour is that Donald Trump decided that it was time to fire the Board of the Kennedy Center and install a chair who really grokked what the Center was all about and would faithfully execute its highest artistic mission — namely himself. What’s that you say? Trump has the time to run the Kennedy Center? Well, with Elon running the country, yeah, I guess. Lots of time, apparently.
— NotSilencedNow (@notsilencednow) February 8, 2025
Now if Melania would have taken over the gig, it would have been a bit weird, but certainly understandable, because she’s the First Lady. But Trump himself taking this over? And then it gets good: nobody at the Center knows anything about this. The Atlantic:
Trump plans to announce the dismissal of multiple members of the Kennedy Center board as soon as today, a group likely to include recent appointees of former President Joe Biden; among those on the current board are the Democratic political strategist Mike Donilon, former White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, and Democratic National Committee finance chair Chris Korge. The White House has also had discussions about having Trump himself installed as chair of the board, according to two people familiar with the purge, who requested anonymity to describe plans that are not yet public.
A White House spokesperson declined to comment.
(Several hours after this article published, Trump confirmed the news, writing on Truth Social that he planned to make the Kennedy Center “GREAT AGAIN” by terminating “multiple individuals from the Board of Trustees, including the Chairman, who do not share our Vision for a Golden Age in Arts and Culture.” He wrote that he planned to announce a “new Board, with an amazing Chairman, DONALD J. TRUMP!” adding, “The Kennedy Center is an American Jewel, and must reflect the brightest STARS on its stage from all across our Nation. For the Kennedy Center, THE BEST IS YET TO COME!”)
“The Kennedy Center has received no formal notifications from the White House about what you’ve reported,” Eileen Andrews, the center’s vice president of public relations, told us before Trump put out his Truth Social post.
Trump never attended the Kennedy Center’s annual gala event during his first term, as artists protested his administration and threatened to boycott Kennedy Center events at the White House. Now Trump is making clear that he will not be sidelined again from the most celebrated cultural institution in Washington.
“The attitude is different this time. The attitude is Go fuck yourself,” said one of the people familiar with the planning. “It’s ridiculous for four years for Trump and Melania to say, ‘We’re not going to the Kennedy Center because Robert De Niro doesn’t like us.’” (De Niro was a Kennedy Center honoree in 2009 and spoke at the 2024 event.)
Trump’s relationship with the arts world has long been strained. During his first year in office, all 17 members of the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, a nonpartisan advisory body whose members at the time had been appointed by President Barack Obama, resigned over what they called Trump’s “hateful rhetoric” following the white-nationalist demonstration in Charlottesville, Virginia. Trump later disbanded the group, rather than replace the committee, which was established by Ronald Reagan.
And some of this is about getting back at Joe Biden and owning the libs. On Inauguration Day Trump abolished the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. Why? Probably because Biden revived it in 2022.
Nine days into his second term, he signed an executive order restarting planning for an idea from his first term: a national “Garden of American Heroes,” location to be determined. Trump had previously named 244 honorees—52 of them women—who would get statues, including figures from science, sports, entertainment, politics, and business, as well as some of the nation’s founders. (The family of at least one would-be honoree, the anti-communist Whittaker Chambers, later asked that he not be included.)
Donald is now going to be a man of kul-chuh, doncha know? He’s a very kulchuh-ed guy, after all. He knows how to stick his pinkie finger out when drinking a Diet Coke, he just doesn’t do it because he doesn’t want to upset MAGA.
Who knows what’s next? Maybe Trump will do a one-man show on Broadway. Don’t put it past him. He’s totally drunk on power and vainglory right now. He thinks he’s not only king of America but that he has the trust deed to the entire world.
During the presidential campaign, Trump said he wanted the Semiquincentennial celebrations to last more than a year, from Memorial Day 2025—just 15 weeks away—until July 4, 2026. He proposed a “Great American State Fair” in Iowa as one component, an homage to the state’s own summer fair tradition but featuring pavilions from each state. He also promised the creation of a new national high-school sporting contest, called the Patriot Games, to take place alongside the fair. “Together we will build it, and they will come,” he said in 2023.
The Trumps as patrons of the arts. This ought to be memorable.
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fuddy duddy organization, he can have it
it plays an important role in arts education, it isn’t his damned vanity project!
When does the life sized nude statue of Kanye West’s wife get placed in the lobby?
OMG. Was that a display or was that a display?
The White Evangelical Racist Hateful center it will become.Trump will open center with performance called a salute to proud boys,Klu Klux Clan and Adolph Hitler.
are you seriously saying you don’t want to see honorees Sylvester Stallone and kid rock. rock for his lyrical poetry and his particularly adept mangling of Dylan’s ode to Slim Pickens. hosted by Ye? really?
Springtime for Hitler in Germany never got any awards. I know Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder are now working on something in eternity, but they deserve an honor as producers!!!! I wonder if Ye would catch the show? He’s a big Hitler fan, as is the new chairman and the Apartheid Kidd. Maybe Ye would do the honors to place a Nazi armband on the nude statue of his beautiful concubine on opening night! Dick Shawn deserves one for playing Hitler in a fetching way!
Scott Baio, kid rock, hulk hogan, Ted Nugent…only the best…
I guess we can “look forward” to one hit wonder Ted Nugent, and I guess Kid Rock as musical Kennedy Center honorees. And Scot Baio too. Naturally it will be renamed the Trump-Kennedy Center, at least for a while before it becomes the Trump Center. The lobby will be adorned with giant velvet tapestries of Trump as Elvis of course. I think of the times I went to the Kennedy Center when I lived in the DC area and am utterly appalled by this. I hate to say it but someday when Trump is dead and gone they should raze the place and rebuild it. Because the Trump stench will infuse every nook and cranny of this national treasure and the only way to eradicate it is to tear it down and dump everything in the ocean and rebuild from scratch.
Geez, Trump, don’t you already have a job? Why do you have to stick your boogerdhy nose in everything?!?
Reeg, Trumpler’s job is cheating at golf and staging hillbilly rallies for his adoring faithful, those who remain that is. All other functions of the president will be assumed by Elon the Muskrat.
He can barely read–4th grade level at best, just like his MAGAts.How often has he attended an opera, balket, play,or musical despite being a,Native New Yorker, with a home within walking g district of Broadway and a short cab ride from Carnegie Hall?
I hope there’s a revival.of Cabaret. The emcee can don a Trump mask I stead of using makeup and lighting g to reveal a skull face.