Donald Trump berated a Democratic member of the Kennedy Center board before the board voted Tuesday to close the performing arts center.
The decision to shut down followed a ruling by U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper that prevented the board from displaying Trump’s name on the exterior of the building, either in the form of “renovated and restored by Donald J. Trump” on the main building or “President Donald J. Trump Plaza” on the site.
Trump’s call to the board, which he chairs, was “f---ing crazy,” a source familiar with the call told CNN. The president reportedly screamed at Ohio Rep. Joyce Beatty, a Democratic ex officio board member whose lawsuit led to Cooper’s ruling.
Trump, 80, said the congresswoman “never built anything,” while Beatty, 76, called the president “ignorant” and said he was responsible for the Kennedy Center’s financial woes, The New York Times reported.
Beatty told MS NOW Tuesday that Trump “went into a tantrum.”
“It was the most unprofessional thing I have ever witnessed or been a part of,” she said on The Weeknight. “He went into name-calling—everything from trying to say that I was an obstructionist, I was dumb. He said, ‘I think you’re incompetent.’ And I said, ‘I know you’re incompetent.’”
“I was not going to let him call me awful things,” Beatty continued. “He said he was going to hold me responsible if something fell out of the ceiling and killed someone. And I told him, I said, ‘You’re already killing people. We’re at war.’”
And when Trump mentioned that Beatty had never “built anything,” Beatty said she fired back about Trump’s bankruptcies.
“It really went there,” she recounted.
Trump also criticized Cooper during the call, CNN reported. Before the judge’s ruling, Trump attacked the Barack Obama-appointed judge as “very hostile and conflicted.”
In his decision, Cooper wrote that no one’s name can be added to the Kennedy Center without congressional approval.
“Simply put, Defendants cannot install memorials for President Trump or anyone or anything else at the Kennedy Center without Congress’s blessing,” he wrote. “The board resolution bucks a federal court order and a statute Congress enacted.”
After the ruling, Trump threatened on social media that if an appeals court or the Supreme Court didn’t overturn Cooper’s ruling, he would block a $257 million renovation of the building.
“If the ruling is a negative one, which it should not be, and is not overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court,” he said in the post, “the Reconstruction and the Renovation of The Kennedy Center will not take place.”
Members of the Kennedy Center board, which Trump filled with allies, include second lady Usha Vance; Elaine Chao, wife of Mitch McConnell; Allison Lutnick, wife of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick; musician Lee Greenwood; assistant to the president Dan Scavino; Education Secretary Linda McMahon; former Attorney General Pam Bondi; and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles.
The board cited “hazardous” conditions in voting to close the venue for renovations. Trump wrote on Truth Social that the building would close “immediately,” even though a court order has blocked its closure.
The president also shared a video emphasizing the need for repairs.
Beatty, who has represented Ohio’s third congressional district since 2013, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Beast. But in a public statement, she praised Cooper’s ruling.
“The law is extremely clear: The John F. Kennedy Center is named for President Kennedy—and no one else. But President Trump is holding the Kennedy Center hostage unless he can put his name on this sacred memorial,” Beatty said. “The Court just rejected this proposal for the second time. This unlawfulness is as breathtaking as it is wrong, and it needs to stop.”
White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said in a statement: “For decades, Democrats let the Kennedy Center rot as water damage spread, infrastructure crumbled, and a national treasure fell apart under their watch. President Trump stepped up to save it, and Trump-deranged Dumocrats like Joyce Beatty oppose anything that celebrates the greatness of our country because they put America Last.”
In his ruling, Cooper also addressed fundraising efforts that the administration claims depend on Trump’s name appearing on the memorial. He found that the government had “offered no proof that current or future donations hinge on President Trump’s name being on the building” and “no competent evidence that removing the Trump name would prevent the Center from fulfilling its artistic mission, as it has done for the last sixty years.”
Cooper previously ruled in May that having Trump’s name on the Kennedy Center was illegal. It first appeared on the building last December following a board vote.
Beatty told the New York Times then that Trump pretended to be surprised by the development: “He said, ‘Oh, I didn’t know you all were going to name it after me!’”
That same month, Trump put his name on another capital building: the U.S. Institute of Peace.
