It’s past ten am in Washington, DC and Trump’s name, or most of it remains on the Kennedy Center. Hidden by a tarp. Workers, no doubt on orders to do so moved as SLOWLY as they could yesterday to avoid meeting the court ordered deadline to remove Trump’s name. Shortly after 3:30am they knocked off work for the night. I saw a live shot of the place fifteen minutes ago (at ten am) and NO workers are anywhere to be seen! Clearly Trump is going to try and keep his name up there for as long as possible.
There’s so much to say it’s hard to know where to begin. When Judge Cooper entered his ruling on May 12 he gave Trump until June 12 to comply. Almost two weeks. Yesterday, for much of the day we saw workers erecting scaffolding at an incredibly slow pace. Trump, during his appeal yesterday tried to cite weather concerns and on TV journalists said there had been some stormy weather including lightening. I call bullshit. First of all the work was being done under an overhang that would protect workers from rainfall. Second, while lightening would in fact create dangerous conditions, live shots were shown all day and evening before dark and workers were right there on or literally within arm’s length of that metal scaffolding! Then there’s the fact the nasty-assed Trump name was put up by workers working from cranes. His name has come off other buildings with workers on cranes and there’s NO reason it couldn’t have been done here.
I wrote on PZ yesterday Trump would fight his name coming off the Kennedy Center to the bitter end. He’s doing exactly that. He waited until the almost the last moment to appeal the decision, filing it late Thursday. A three-judge panel from the DC Circuit slapped him down and fast. What happened turned out to be pretty cool. An article from The Mirror US contains an awesome tweet of a double rainbow in the sky after the appellate decision telling Trump to go screw himself was handed down:
Double rainbow at the Kennedy Center, moments after the storm and the court's ruling confirming that Trump's name must be removed. pic.twitter.com/As9ht97zSY
— Maureen Cohen Harrington (@VeganSkaterDC) June 13, 2026
Talk about a sign/message from the Universe! Alas, as I’ve stated workers took their sweet assed time. I’m sure the overtime pay they knew they’d get was enough motivation to meet Trump’s demand to delay (if not stop) removal of his hateful name. I’ll include a video from the week hours of this morning at the end. The slow-motion effort you see as they finish the scaffolding and erect the tarp is the same way they were all freaking day and evening long. There’s no doubt they were ORDERED to NOT get the job done and they made sure they didn’t. The last part of that appalling and excruciating video shows them taking a lengthy break starting around 3:15am, and as 3:30 approached there were handshakes (and even some hugs) as they packed up their gear and left for the night!
There ARE photos that seem to show a worker behind the tarp taking down a letter (P) but clearly the work wasn’t completed. The judge granted a ’12 hour extension’ to complete the work but all may not be as it seems. Trump is taking the extension as loosely as possible and reporting now says his lawyers have till noon to ‘report back’ to the judge. Which I guess means they’ve decided means give the judge a “plan” on when the work will be done. Again, I call bullshit on ALL of this! An article from USA Today gives an accounting of the legal stuff. It includes stuff about the crow eagerly watching the process and hoping to see the name come down. It also includes this:
With the clock ticking toward an end-of-day deadline, the Trump administration later filed an emergency petition with the U.S. Court of Appeals requesting that it intervene to pause the order before 7 p.m. ET, but the panel denied the request. But that request was immediately denied by judges, paving the way for the president’s name to be removed from the building as a crowd of onlookers stood by to watch workers do the job. After midnight on June 13, workers were still erecting a scaffold needed to remove the lettering.
Ten bucks says come noon the lawyers will report to judge Cooper a ‘plan’ to assemble a NEW crew, claiming that ‘golly gee your Honor, they worked as hard as they could until past three in the morning and couldn’t get it done. So now we’ll have to find a NEW set of workers because these guys are exhausted and it would be dangerous for them to get up on that scaffolding.’ IF the judge doesn’t slap them down and hard today will go by and much, if not all Trump’s name will be visible behind that tarp. THEN he’ll find another excuse as to why the work can’t be done on Sunday which not at all coincidently happens to be Trump’s birthday. One can imagine the playacting of “But your Honor! It’s Sunday! A day of rest so we can worship the Lord and Savior Jesus.”
Could it be Trump wants to delay revealing his name is still on the Kennedy Center until his WH lawn UFC cage fights is showing on pay-per-view? And, between bouts workers WILL be up on the scaffolding with bolt cutters to cut away the freaking tarp. A giant f**k you judge Cooper and all y’all. THAT is exactly the kind of thing the Trump we know and hate would do.
Well, it’s now eleven am and I checked MS NOW which had a live shot of that bigassed tarp. But NO workers in evidence! Trump has NO intention of sending a crew back today to complete the work. Eventually he’ll have to comply. But, and you heard it here on Politizoom first it will take yet another order from the judge to get that tarp and scaffolding taken down so the public can once again see ONLY the words ‘The John F. Kennedy Center For The Performing Arts’ above the main entrance.
As promised here’s video of the work NOT being completed. You can easily click forward instead of watching the whole hour and a half. You should watch bits and pieces because it proves my point Trump will fight having the Kennedy Center entrance once again look the way it’s supposed to for as long as he can.
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