While Elon Musk roots out the so-called fraud and abuse in the nation’s budget and causes chaos in virtually every federal department along the way, President Donald Trump has his eyes on the arts and culture offerings at the Kennedy Center.
In another power grab, Trump was elected the chairman of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday.
The election took place after Trump dismissed board members appointed by former President Joe Biden and installed a board of his own in their place, including the vice president’s wife, Usha Vance, as well as current White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.
In a virtual call with new board members on Wednesday, Trump said the Kennedy Center “got very wokey,” his words, “and some people were not happy with it.”
Musk, in his role with the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, as it is known, has taken over duties normally handled by the president, even holding court with reporters in the Oval Office as Trump introduced him to the media and sat quietly while he answered questions.
With Musk in charge, handling everything from firing employees to freezing funding throughout the federal government, Trump is left with time on his hands to address paper and plastic straws, and in this case, keep drag shows and other performances that don’t align with his administration off the Kennedy Center stages.
“I think we are going to make it hot,” Trump said in his remarks to the board. “And we make the presidency hot, so this should be easy. And it’s just really it’s great,” Trump said in audio shared on CNN.
CNN’s Jake Tapper said the vote to make Trump chairman of the board of the center was not unanimous, with some abstentions and some votes against Trump, but he admitted that Trump had packed the board with loyalists, “so it was an overwhelming vote in favor of him.”
In other business, the board also voted to fire its longtime president, Deborah Rutter, who had already announced plans to retire later this year. She was replaced by Richard Grenell, a MAGA loyalist who served in Trump’s first administration.
In addition to the 2,000-plus performances that take place each year at the Kennedy Center, the board and president also oversee the National Symphony Orchestra, Washington National Opera and fundraising for the center.
Not necessarily an interest in culture, but asserting control
Trump first expressed an interest in the gig on Sunday when he told reporters on Air Force One that the shows were “terrible” and a “disgrace” pointing to a recent drag show performance and other “anti-American propaganda”.
While Trump never stepped inside the Kennedy Center in his four years in D.C., he is now doing what he can to define culture in this new MAGA era.
Culture, one might assume that includes Kid Rock, Lee Greenwood and Billy Ray Cyrus, who supported him in his campaign for re-election.
“Trump, in general, has shown very little interest in the arts, beyond the artists who were willing to play at his rallies and other events — Kid Rock, Lee Greenwood and that one guy from the Village People,” said Carolina Miranda, with The Washington Post in an opinion piece. “Institutions of art have generally been hostile toward him. This could be his way not of expressing interest in culture, but of asserting control.”
“One area that will certainly become more difficult is the center’s long and excellent record of bringing in dance companies from countries with which we have fractious relationships, such as Russia and China,” said Marc Fisher in the same piece. “I would think those endeavors will be much more problematic with this politicizing of the center.”
Trump said on Truth Social that he planned to “immediately terminate” individuals that do not “share our vision for a golden age in arts and culture.”
The move to become chair of the Kennedy Center may be one of the items on Trump’s long list of places and people to get retribution against that he formulated as he stewed for four years at Mar-a-Lago.
It is speculated that Trump held a grudge against the center because multiple artists threatened to boycott the annual Kennedy Center Honors event if he attended in his first term. It had been customary for the sitting president to attend the prestigious event.
Response: Advisors step down, artists cancel upcoming shows
In response to longtime leaders being fired and Trump’s election as board chair, a number of advisors have stepped down and artists have cancelled upcoming shows including Renée Fleming, Ben Folds, Shonda Rhimes, Issa Rae and Adam Weiner.
“Given developments at the Kennedy Center, effective today I am resigning as artistic adviser to the N.S.O.,” Folds wrote on Instagram about his role with the National Symphony Orchestra. “Mostly, and above all, I will miss the musicians of our nation’s symphony orchestra — just the best!”
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is America’s living memorial to President John F. Kennedy, attracting millions of visitors each year, according to its website. In a statement, the center said this it has always had a collaborative relationship with every presidential administration with a bi-partisan board of 36 trustees that has supported the arts in a non-partisan fashion.
“Upon learning that this institution that has run nonpartisan for 54 years is now chaired by President Trump himself and his regime, I decided I will not perform there,” Weiner, of the Low Cut Connie rock band, posted to social media, adding that fans and friends may be “directly negatively affected by this administration’s policies and messaging.”
Board members are appointed to six-year terms and typically, those terms are fulfilled. The public-private partnership is supported by federal annual appropriations for the upkeep and maintenance of the building as a federal memorial amounting to approximately 16 percent of the center’s total operating budget.
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Crystal Graham
