President Donald Trump loyalist and Kennedy Center boss Richard Grenell is raging again after another performance group canceled its event at the once-renowned arts venue.
The San Francisco Ballet announced it had withdrawn from a five-day run at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts scheduled for May, prompting a pointed response from Grenell, 59.
“Professional artists should perform for everyone — not just for people they agree with politically,” the Trump appointee told The New York Times on Saturday.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the San Francisco Ballet for comment. In a statement to the New York Times, the company said: “SF Ballet looks forward to performing for Washington, D.C., audiences in the future.”
For his part, Grenell has repeatedly appeared to grow enraged as artists scrap shows at the venue, citing concerns about Trump and his administration.
“You just made it political and caved to the woke mob who wants you to perform for only Lefties,” Grenell posted on X, channelling MAGA talking points, after Grammy-winning bluegrass performer Béla Fleck withdrew from a planned concert at the venue in January.
Critics, however, argue that it was Trump himself who politicized the venue when he slapped his name on the arts institution—a move that reportedly contributed to ticket sales plummeting since his takeover.
As audiences continued to thin, Trump—who appointed himself as the venue’s chairman—has leaned on programming tied to himself and his family, such as January’s premiere of Melania, the first lady’s vanity documentary.
Still, Trump announced last month that he is shuttering the Kennedy Center for a MAGA makeover amid mounting cancellations. In a Truth Social post, he wrote that he would “temporarily” close the center on July 4 for “Construction, Revitalization, and Complete Rebuilding.” The overhaul, he said, would last two years.
Dismissing the capital’s premier performing arts center as “tired, broken, and dilapidated,” the president pledged to remake it into a “new and beautiful Landmark.”
Meanwhile, several members of the Kennedy family have blasted the president’s remaking of the arts institution.
Jack Schlossberg, JFK’s only grandson, slammed the president for “renaming the Kennedy Center after himself,” and for dismantling “all the programs [Kennedy] fought for” in a recent interview on CBS Sunday Morning, where he also tore into Ryan Murphy, the executive producer of Love Story, the new TV show about JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette.
