I'm reading "What Washington lost when the Kennedy Center closed/We asked Washington Post readers to share memories of the storied arts hub. Hundreds responded" (gift link so you can see the selected memories).
September 19, 2026
"Following a 19-month effort by President Donald Trump to take control of the arts center, its board voted to close the building Tuesday..."
"... as Trump, who has demanded his name be added to the institution, threatened to cancel a more than $250 million renovation. The president said Wednesday that without his intervention the building could be 'ripped down.'"
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52 comments:
How has the Watergate complex survived? It is seriously ugly.
DC is just waiting Trump out. You can be sure the Senate Republicans are waiting to refund the Kennedy Center in 2029. Take that Trump!
I understand I’m being cajoled into the daily Trump hate but the institution is packed with partisan people, at times using the venue, on and off the stage for petty swipes at Republicans. That runs contradictory to the mission of the venue as a people’s performance center. Lefties are always whining about wasted money when Trump’s traveling for work, doing his job. From what they made of it I don’t mourn the loss if it goes…
The Democrats and the DC Republicans have always refused to recognize POTUS as a legitimate POTUS and treat him as such. That's why they tried to censor him, and put him in jail after he left office. And why the Senate R's played Pontius Pilate and refused to lift a finger to help Trump.
The target isn't trump, it what he represents. Of course people are too stupid to understand that. If they did they'd be hanging the Senate R's from the nearest lampost - instead of re-electing them.
Blah blah blah. Yeah, you just cant boobs to understand what the Left is up to. They always want to play the wise ol' greybeard - the only adult in the room - who sees both sides are wrong. All that silly political stuff. Not important like y'know Money.
God save us these morons. These type of self-satisified clowns are the kind that lead to Lenin and Hitler. Or slow decline and collapse.
It's our way, or the building gets it. Emphatically.
An "arts" center is Hollywood. Hollywood is all leftwing.
The Hollywood - Obama types. This is a hell no way moment for the left.
Trump wants to do the hard work and improve the place, for all to enjoy... and he would like some recognition. Again - the Hollywood-Obama left will never let that happen.
and and - F Obama.
I just looked over the Trump proposal to modernize the building. Only a lunatic would say no. The exterior would be cleaned and polished, with no major changes. The interior gets upgraded electrical and plumbing, new escalators, new flooring and so on. I'm absolutely shocked that the Kennedy Center people objected to this.
This is the one example that the “he’s building monuments to himself” crowd has that fits their headline. The arch is a monument to our past heroes. The ballroom will benefit every president except Trump and be a great part of the White House. The hundreds of cleaned and repaired and polished monuments fountains and pools around DC is to the glory of America not Trump.
So they must keep the myth of the Trump-Kennedy Center existential crisis theatre show running.
Join me at the Kennedy Center's Mary Jo Kopechne Underwater Bar!
We can't have nice things, and that's the way it's gonna stay. ~ The Left.
** I'm absolutely shocked that the Kennedy Center people objected to this. **
They didn’t. They objected to Trump accomplishing yet another obvious improvement.
This is the least of the institutions the left has destroyed over hatred for Trump.
Sell the damned building. A performing arts center does not need to be government owned and operated. Just look at the sh*t job it’s done up to now. Seriously.
Like the DMV, it’s a reminder not to give government more to govern than absolutely required.
They don't want to fix the Kennedy Center. They want it torn down and they can blame it on Trump, because if they do, they know they'll get a brand new, bigger, better, grander arts center after Trump leaves office. I think maybe Trump is getting outplayed on this one by the swamp creatures.
as the saying goods, there are two types of music (or Any art)..
1) pop music. that is; music that is popular (people like)
2) unpopular music. music that can ONLY exist IF the goverment pays for it
All the things Trump's enemies accuse him of being, Kennedy was in fact. Making for a very weird battle of names.
9:12 Spiros
The left prefer stagnation and decay. (along with HARM)
Guess I’m the most cynical of the realist positions then. They simply want the limbo to last longer than Trump’s term. They don’t GAF about any of the possible outcomes other than the desire to extend the status quo. Ironically the Left is arguing from the conservative perspective here.
JFK F*cks Marylin Monroe Center for the Arts.
Better.
Trump’s obsession with having things named after him is bizarre.
Every day Trump demonstrates how inept our government has been for decades. He gets more done, created and/or repaired than any previous president. The people who object to this type of progress are just trying to save face. They should get on the bandwagon instead, the big dummies.
Close the damn thing and burn it down. How does it benefit the average American???
I asked Google how much US taxpayer money was directed to The Kennedy Center between 2008-2025.
Answer is 740 million.
“Trump’s obsession with having things named after him is bizarre.“
Most people want visible credit for what they’ve done. In case you haven’t noticed, people generally don’t want to give Trump credit for anything, so of course he’s going to take it upon himself. It’s pretty small potatoes to worry about his name on things.
Cappy ### !
I admire the double-entendre of your “theater” tag for this post, Professor!
AMDG-
Says Harry Reid International Airport
The Kennedy Center was doing fine until Trump meddled with it. He fired the previous board of trustees, which included some big donors. He installed his supporter Ric Grenell as acting president of the center. Grenell claimed that the center was in financial trouble when he took office but I never saw that he published the data to show it. Grenell stepped down after a little more than a year in the job.
The Kennedy Center *is* is financial trouble now because Trump's meddling alienated so many donors and audience members. The two-year closure is an excuse to hide the mess Trump has made of the center as a performance space.
I voted for Trump, but the Kennedy Center would have been in better shape under senile Joe Biden.
The Kennedy center is a government funded space where artists get to play leftist politics, that’s about it, oh, they also get to have huge exclusive parties there that ordinary people can’t go to to show how elite they are.
“Trump’s obsession with having things named after him is bizarre.“
I think by units sold Henry Ford is still way higher on that “things named after” thing to which he refers. And Mary See! Don’t overlook her variety.
@ Kurt Schuler
I read the roof is failing and the building is structurally unsound. That doesn't happen overnight. What's up with that? Why has it been allowed to get into this state?
I heared vandals possibly, antifa social Democrats, have torned down the roof and undermined the building foundation.
The KC is dual natured and dual budgeted. The G pays for the building itself. Ticket sales pay for everything else. The artist pullout and patron boycott reduced the latter stream to nearly nothing. Is that Trump's fault, or the fault of the artists and patrons? Kind of like asking whether urban decay was the fault of the black families who bought in white neighborhoods, or the whites who fled. I think in both cases it was the fault of color prejudice: anti-black, then anti-orange.
Also a bit of Cloward-Piven on both sides: the institution has been brought to crisis point, and now both sides are racing to be the one who rescues it. CC, JSM
While they have fond memories, they don't really value the arts if all it takes is Trump's name to drive them away. That also shows why this is no longer true: "It was what a great arts institution does. It puts everyone on the same level."
If Trump was able to generate interest in the arts among his supporters who previously had little interest, that should have been a good thing. Instead, he gets criticized for even just using "Nessun dorma" at his rallies.
Is Trump a great friend of the performing arts? Maybe he should put his name to a wrestling arena.
Bob Boyd: Yes, Trump's people claim that the building is structurally unsound. As with their other claims about the Kennedy Center, they are not being transparent. Let them invite a group of journalists, architects, building inspectors, and construction experts, suitably supervised, to go anywhere in the building to examine and assess it with cameras and equipment. Even if parts of the building are in bad repair, renovation in phases may be possible. Instead, we get assertions that we are supposed to take on trust. The whole thing smells of the same costly incompetence evident with the Reflecting Pool.
They lost me when they gave their Mark Twain prize to Tina Fey for her Sarah Palin impersonation, passing over some talents who'd been entertaining the country for decades. The next year it was Will Ferrell. The year after that it was Ellen DeGeneres, before Leno or Letterman, Eddie Murphy or Bill Murray. This year it was Bill Maher. The ceremony was actually held at the troubled center. The roof didn't cave in and no one was injured. There was just a lot of nauseating self-congratulation by the celebrities.
Letseee 740/17= $43 million+ per year.
Explanations Kurt?
Given the state of the culture, is DC's cultural center going into an eclipse necessarily a bad thing? The center was a product of a different age, a different culture, a different America, that isn't coming back. Trump 2.0 may be bringing back the imperial spirit of the Kennedy-Johnson years, but American culture isn't the authoritative, uniting force it once was.
"Let them invite a group of journalists, architects, building inspectors, and construction experts, suitably supervised, to go anywhere in the building to examine and assess it with cameras and equipment."
- Trump voter Kurt Schuler
"Kennedy Center officials under the current board have conducted media and donor tours of these conditions (basement, parking garage, pump rooms, vaults, etc.) and released photo documentation emphasizing decades of neglect."
- NBC News per Grok
The wife and I attended numerous Kennedy Center performances back in the day. The building was designed without adequate parking — amazingly, the architects decided that people would mostly use public transportation. Coming to a symphony? The performances were great but long walks to expensive parking garages did not improve the experience.
My impression of the people attending was that they were mostly there to be seen attending, not because they enjoyed a great operatic or symphony performance.
Go ahead. Close it down. Tear it down. Let them take the Acela to New York and attend the Met.
Election coming up. Anything distracting from Iran, Epstein and rising cost of living is welcome.
Spiros said...
I just looked over the Trump proposal to modernize the building. Only a lunatic would say no. The exterior would be cleaned and polished, with no major changes. The interior gets upgraded electrical and plumbing, new escalators, new flooring and so on. I'm absolutely shocked that the Kennedy Center people objected to this.
No you aren't. You are not stupid.
Everyone in Washington DC is a corrupt traitorous piece of shit that lives as a parasite on the productive parts of our country.
"“Trump’s obsession with having things named after him is bizarre.“
It's very unseemly.
---Robert C. Byrd.
"The whole thing smells of the same costly incompetence evident with the Reflecting Pool."
You think the reflecting pool was in good shape before Trump fixed it?
What did you think of the costly incompetence of the Obama administration which spent $300 Million to "fix" it.
New rule: I refuse to take seriously anyone who refers to Richard Grenell as merely (Trump's) "supporter."
"Election coming up. Anything distracting from Iran, Epstein and rising cost of living is welcome."
How about 5.1 % growth in gdp, the highest median household income since 1967 (up 2.7 %), unemployment at 4.1%, the lowest poverty rate ever recorded?
Distractions from that 1/4 point fed hike, which is the important front-page news, right Rich? Not the most important, though, which is...wait for it...Epstein!
Even when inflation is low, the cost of living is rising.
The reflecting pool incompetence was not that costly by DC standards. Trump got a smokin' deal on incompetence compared to what is usually paid for incompetence in DC.
So I haven't been following this business at all. I didn't even know the structural issues re: the Kennedy Center were controversial.
I Having said that, it wouldn't be unreasonable to assume that somebody has been pocketing money for years that was supposed to go toward upkeep. Now they're trying to use politics and Trump hatred to create smoke and avoid being exposed. Seems like that is the whole story of the entire 10 or 12 year Trump phenomenon, crooked folks in DC trying to avoid exposure and consequences for their corruption, so why would this be any different?
*I'm absolutely shocked that the Kennedy Center people objected to this.*
Really?
*The Kennedy Center was doing fine until Trump meddled with it. *
It was? Is that why it needs $250 million in repairs? Because it was doing fine?
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