Trump's Cultural Coup

Artists remain defiant in response to the president’s hostile takeover of the Kennedy Center

On Monday, Donald Trump paid his first visit to the Kennedy Center since installing himself as chairman last month.

Days after staging a Tesla infomercial on the White House lawn, he used the nation’s premier performing arts venue to convene the board of trustees in what felt like a reboot of The Apprentice. He sat at a long table in the venue’s opera house, flanked by his allies on the board (including second lady Usha Vance), and bemoaned the supposedly diminished state of the Kennedy Center.

“It’s in tremendous disrepair, as is a lot of the rest of our country, most of it because of bad management,” he told reporters.

Trump, who has denounced “drag shows specifically targeting our youth” and other “woke” programming at the Kennedy Center, offered his ideas for a creative overhaul, including hosting the annual Kennedy Center Honors (because he is “the king of ratings,” he said), and granting posthumous awards to the likes of Elvis Presley and Luciano Pavarotti (who received the honor, while very much alive, in 2001…but what are facts?)

He also touted an upcoming production of Les Misérables—the classic musical about the downtrodden masses rising up against an oppressive regime—which was booked long before he took office. Trump emphasized the need to bring “Broadway hits” to the center (which has long featured such programming) but also took a shot at Hamilton, the blockbuster musical that was scheduled to run next year but was canceled in the wake of Trump’s takeover.

“I never liked Hamilton very much. I never liked it, but we are going to have some really good shows,” he said.

Trump spent most of Monday’s visit in real estate developer mode, focused not on arts programming but on the physical maintenance of the building, which is funded by the federal government he is currently gutting. He complained about union stagehands who want “$30,000 to move a piano” and grumbled about exterior columns that are “supposed to be covered by something, whether it’s marble or whatever, granite,” but have been painted instead.

“I never realized this was in such bad shape. I've been so busy, I haven't been able to be here in a long time,” said Trump, who recently admitted he has never attended a show there. “It's a very big part of the fabric of Washington, D.C., and we're going to make our capital great again, just like we're going to make our country great again.”

When it comes to the future of the Kennedy Center, Trump has little more than the “concept of a plan,” but the chaos and uncertainty he has unleashed is very real.

It began in early February, when Trump announced on Truth Social that he was going to terminate any Kennedy Center board members “who do not share our Vision for a Golden Age in Arts and Culture,” starting with chairman David M. Rubenstein.

Over the next few weeks, Trump installed himself as chairman and appointed dozens of loyalists with little or no arts experience—including White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and Fox News personalities Laura Ingraham and Maria Bartiromo—to the board. Deborah Rutter, president of the Kennedy Center since 2014, was dismissed and Richard Grenell, a longtime Trump ally, was named president and interim executive director.

In response to actions that amounted to a cultural coup, numerous high-profile artists severed ties with the organization. TV producer Shonda Rhimes resigned from the board of trustees, while comedian Issa Rae, musician Rhiannon Giddens, and dozens of other artists bailed on upcoming gigs at the center. In truly earth-shattering news for the parents of the region, even a theatrical version of the beloved children’s show Bluey was postponed—supposedly due to a tour scheduling change, though who knows. (After all, Trump is known to hate dogs.)

The fallout has been so intense that it’s driven classical music fans, typically a prim bunch, to get rowdy: J.D. and Usha Vance were loudly booed when they attended a performance by the National Symphony Orchestra last week.

Adam Weiner, frontman of the rock group Low Cut Connie, understands the outrage.

“They are attempting to turn the Kennedy Center into the arts wing of the Trump regime. That is obvious to anyone paying attention,” said Weiner, who had been scheduled to perform at the Kennedy Center as part of a social impact program, but quickly canceled once Trump had installed himself as chairman.

“For 54 years, it was a nonpartisan institution that received a small percentage of its funding from the federal government…and always had board members appointed by different administrations. Then immediately, overnight, it was a fully Trump-controlled institution.” (Low Cut Connie will now perform at the Miracle Theatre in Washington D.C., with some proceeds going to support an LGBTQ+ center.)

For some artists, the decision to cancel has come at significant personal cost. Canadian singer-songwriter Amanda Rheaume was invited to perform nearly a year ago. She considered it an honor and was excited to share music from her new album, which tells stories about the Métis people, an indigenous group in Canada. She spent months—and roughly $1700—applying for a visa ahead of a concert in April. But she, too, canceled. "Artists create spaces for people to put their emotions when things feel grim and hopeless,” said Rheaume, who staged a livestream concert in lieu of the Kennedy Center show. “Artists can dream alternative futures. It's really an important time for that.”

Angélica Negrón, who sings and plays the accordion with the band Balún, was similarly excited about performing at the Center and “bringing our unapologetically Puerto Rican sound to a national space,” she said. But the band decided to cancel, worrying they might be targeted as a Latino band with queer members. “Even though the presence of a band like ours is important, our safety and our values are more important,” she said. “There are many different ways to fight this battle. For us, what felt right at this moment was to not do it from that stage.”

On one hand, Trump’s focus on the Kennedy Center is baffling, given the issues that supposedly propelled him back to the White House—namely, immigration and inflation. The institution, while influential, has no control over the price of eggs, the cost of housing, or the movement of migrants across the Southern border. But controlling art and culture—and shunning forms of expression deemed subversive or “degenerate”—is a classic totalitarian move.

And for Trump, no grudge is too slight to turn into his political cause, no perceived snub is ever worth forgetting, and no honor is too sacrosanct to be above exploiting for personal gain. Consider his long-standing vendetta against the Emmys, which he has called “dishonest” and a “con game,” presumably because The Apprentice repeatedly lost the award for outstanding reality program to The Amazing Race.

Trump has an even more contentious relationship with the Kennedy Center, dating back to early in his first term. In 2017, multiple honorees—including TV producer Norman Lear—declined to attend the reception at the White House before the awards. In retaliation, Trump skipped the honors throughout the entirety of his first term.

As both a creator and an avid consumer of television, Trump is probably less concerned with what ballets or operas are staged there and more focused on the Kennedy Center Honors, the star-studded telecast held each December to honor distinguished groups and individuals from the art world (last year’s diverse honorees included Francis Ford Coppola, Bonnie Raitt, Arturo Sandoval, the Apollo Theater, and the Grateful Dead). Typically attended by the sitting president, it is an event where Hollywood power brokers and the D.C. establishment—two groups that have scorned Trump—come together to gladhand.

Ahead of Monday’s board meeting, Trump introduced a resolution that would give him more control over the Kennedy Center honorees. According to the New York Times, he used his usual refrain about the “radical left lunatics” who’d received the prize in the past. It’s not clear who Trump and his allies would select for the honors, who would also be willing to accept under the circumstances. Scott Baio? Ted Nugent? The “making copies” guy from SNL? A posthumous award for Hannibal Lecter?

Regardless of who is honored this year, the special will be broadcast on CBS, a spokesperson for the network confirmed to The Contrarian. CBS has broadcast the honors annually since 1978, usually around Christmas, for ideal, non-controversial holiday viewing. But the network’s deal with the Kennedy Center is up next year, meaning another network could bid on rights to the event—a possibility Trump has already floated.

The honors, as high-profile as they may be, only happen once a year. To thrive, the Kennedy Center will need to attract ticket buyers and deep-pocketed donors 365 days a year. The Kennedy Center website currently lists programming through October, including previously-booked runs of The Sound of Music and Parade, a musical about the lynching of a Jewish man in Georgia in 1915. (“We’re not changing one word,” composer and lyricist Jason Robert Brown said on social media.)

It seems likely that many artists will steer clear of the Kennedy Center as long as Trump remains in charge of its programming—especially if his vision of a splashy, Vegas-style destination is realized. Pedro Zampolli, a Trump ally now serving on the board, told the New York Times he wants the institution to host Valentino fashion shows, open a branch of Cipriani (the high-end Italian restaurant), and build a marina where yachts can be parked before a night on the town. “It will be a beautiful experience,” he said.

Ironically, under Rubenstein and Rutter’s leadership, the Kennedy Center had made efforts to become more community-minded and accessible, through the 2019 opening of the REACH expansion, and the addition of free programming available to the public, including film screenings, yoga classes, and arts workshops. If Trump gets his way, the esteemed cultural institution could become something else entirely: a monument to consumerism.

For now, artists like Weiner remain hopeful that the center will survive as an institution and eventually return to its original mission.

“As a country, there are many things that we can be depressed about right now,” he said. “But the United States has given the world jazz, blues, rock and roll, hip hop, country music, Broadway—the list goes on and on. Our biggest legacy to the world, and our greatest achievement as a country, is the arts.”

If we can keep it.

Meredith Blake is The Contrarian’s culture columnist