JFK’s Infuriated Niece Vows to Take Kennedy Center Renaming Into Own Hands
Lawyer Kerry Kennedy is taking up a carpentry side gig in a hands-on plan to rip Donald Trump’s name from her uncle’s memorial.
Kerry Kennedy has announced a very DIY solution to the addition of Trump’s name to her uncle’s memorial center.
“Three years and one month from today, I’m going to grab a pickax and pull those letters off that building, but I’m going to need help holding the ladder,” Kennedy, 66, wrote on X Friday.
Alongside a photo of the freshly—and clunkily—renamed “The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts,” the lawyer added: “Are you in? Applying for my carpenter’s card today, so it’ll be a union job!!!”
Three years and one month from today, I’m going to grab a pickax and pull those letters off that building, but I’m going to need help holding the ladder. Are you in? Applying for my carpenter’s card today, so it’ll be a union job!!! pic.twitter.com/ZLPhd7fU31
— Kerry Kennedy (@KerryKennedyRFK) December 19, 2025
Just an hour later, fellow JFK niece Maria Shriver added her own damning take on the change. While Kennedy went for a pickax, however, Shriver went straight for Trump’s jugular.
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“Adding your name to a memorial already named in honor of a great man doesn’t make you a great man. Quite the contrary,” she began her post on the platform.
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The two strong reactions at the revelation of Trump’s latest vanity project followed plenty of outspoken comments from the Kennedy family, with Shriver previously calling out the current president’s “obsession” with splashing his name on anything in sight while JFK’s grandnephew Joe Kennedy III pointed out that the change is purely aesthetic rather than legal.
Adding your name to a memorial already named in honor of a great man doesn’t make you a great man. Quite the contrary. Putting your name on top of someone else’s doesn’t mean that people will speak of you in the same breath as the other man. Putting your name above another man’s… pic.twitter.com/3aoxB64XlA
— Maria Shriver (@mariashriver) December 19, 2025
Trump may have already had his lettering already picked out and crafted before he got the green light to change the Kennedy Center’s name, with Karoline Leavitt only announcing the go-ahead on Thursday.
In her statement, the press secretary claimed that the Kennedy Center’s board “voted unanimously to rename the Kennedy Center to the Trump-Kennedy Center...”
Oddly, this didn’t ring true with board member Rep. Joyce Beatty. In a video shared on X a couple of hours later, the Democrat said in part: “To be clear, I was on that call, and as I tried to push my button to voice my concern, to ask questions, and certainly not to vote in support of this, I was muted. Each time I tried to speak, I was muted.”

Karoline Leavitt only announced the name change on Thursday, and Trump already had workers adding his conveniently prepared letters to the building on Friday.
Allison Robbert/Getty Images
In the video’s caption, Beatty repeated the claim that she hadn’t been allowed to speak, and added that the vote was not on the call’s agenda.
“For the record. This was not unanimous. I was muted on the call and not allowed to speak or voice my opposition to this move. Also, for the record, this was not on the agenda. This was not consensus. This is censorship,” she wrote.
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