President Donald Trump has been photographed inspecting a poster boasting of demolishing the Kennedy Center, hours after he threatened the iconic building could be “ripped down.”
During his second term, Trump, 80, has become fixated on the memorial to slain former President John F. Kennedy, which opened in 1971. After installing a board full of his allies, Trump’s name was added to the front of the building last December, before being removed after a court ruling in June.
In August, the Trump administration floated the prospect of knocking the Kennedy Center down and replacing it with an outdoor amphitheater, unless it could be shut down for two years to carry out renovations, claiming it was “structurally unsound” and “embarrassing to the Nation’s Capital.”
The administration also wants Trump’s name reinstalled on the exterior, with tarps still in place to shield the public—and the president’s ego—from seeing it has been removed.
On Wednesday, AFP/Getty Images photographer Brendan Smialowski captured Trump inspecting a poster visible through the windows of Air Force One as he returned from campaigning in North Carolina.
While the full poster could not be seen, the words “Kennedy Center” and what appeared to be “DEMOLISHED” in capital letters were visible above a photograph that was difficult to make out but may have been a possible blueprint for a plan for the site.
The font also matched the one Trump uses in many of his Truth Social posts.
Bill Pulte, Director of U.S. Federal Housing, was spotted carrying large poster boards as he followed Trump off Air Force One, but their contents were concealed.
Pulte, a key member of the Trump-aligned leadership overseeing the Kennedy Center, appeared to stand next to the president as he looked at the poster.
Trump’s 35-year-old special assistant to the president and executive assistant to the president, Natalie Harp, who is paid $150,000 a year, often prints out material for the president to view and suggests possible Truth Social posts, earning her the nickname ‘Human Printer’.
She was on Air Force One with Trump and was also photographed sitting opposite Trump on Marine One as they returned to the White House.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House and the Kennedy Center for comment.
Before being spotted inspecting the poster, Trump had doubled down on his demolition threat on Wednesday, saying the venue was “a big loser, financially.”
When asked why it was so important that his name be added to the memorial for JFK, Trump said, “It’s a very easy question to answer, because it’s a mess.”
After claiming the arts center was losing “sometimes hundred of millions” before he “got involved” in running it, he president said he wants his administration to “get recognition” if they are to continue to run and fund the venue.
“I think the Trump administration should certainly have recognition. Because frankly, if we don’t do that it’s going to close. It’ll end up being ripped down. It’s in very, very bad shape. Very dangerous shape.”
The president then claimed, “You see steel falling down, you see plaster falling off ceilings, you see a lot of dangers.”
In a report this week, the center’s board claimed a severe storm on Sept. 4 caused a 4-by-5-foot section of ceiling plaster to fall from the Grand Foyer. No one was injured.
Trump’s comments about the venue on Wednesday saw him state, “I’d like to be able to save it, but it’s going to take a lot of subsidies into the future.”
He added, “And for us as an administration to want to do that, I think the Trump administration should be recognized.”
The demolition threat comes after Trump and his Kennedy Center board voted to close the venue on Tuesday, following U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper’s ruling that the president’s name could not be restored to the exterior of the building.
“Simply put, Defendants cannot install memorials for President Trump or anyone or anything else at the Kennedy Center without Congress’s blessing,” Cooper wrote in his Sept. 15 ruling.
Reuters photographed workers erecting fencing outside the Kennedy Center on Wednesday.
On CNN on Wednesday, Ohio Rep. Joyce Beatty, an ex officio member of the board who has been fighting Trump’s plans in court, said “the country should be in an uproar” over the potential demolition.
“It‘s clear to me that the president has thrown a tantrum,” she said. “He didn‘t get his way in the court, and he was challenged in the board meeting. And so now he‘s doing what people do when they throw a tantrum and they don‘t get their way: ‘I’m going to tear it down.’”
