Donald Trump ranted that the Kennedy Center is “in a virtual state of collapse” as a judge on Tuesday blocked the center’s board from slapping his name back on the building.
The president’s 300-word post on Truth Social came ahead of the board he installed meeting on Tuesday afternoon to vote on whether to close the Center.
They were also set to vote on adding Trump’s name back on the Kennedy Center, but postponed that vote.
Following a hearing Tuesday morning, District Judge Christopher Cooper ruled the Kennedy Center was blocked from inscribing “renovated and restored by Donald J. Trump” on the main building or renaming the campus the “President Donald J. Trump Plaza.”
“Simply put, Defendants cannot install memorials for President Trump or anyone or anything else at the Kennedy Center without Congress’s blessing. The board resolution bucks a federal court order and a statute Congress enacted,” Cooper wrote.
Democratic Rep. Joyce Beatty, an ex officio member of the Kennedy Center board who’s been leading the fight against Trump’s takeover, argued on Tuesday that the first step to saving the Kennedy Center was blocking Trump’s name from the building. His lawyers noted that the court has already ordered the Center to remain open, so the board’s vote on Tuesday would not be able to close it.
But as the fight played out, Trump melted down in a Truth Social post about how the building is unsafe, as he has pushed to shut down the performing arts center for two full years for renovations.
“The Kennedy Center is in a virtual state of collapse, and has been for many years. A large piece of concrete and steel just dropped down, in a thud, from the ceiling of a heavily trafficked main hallway,” Trump wrote. “If the Building were open, innocent people would have been killed. A security guard had just passed the area, one minute prior to this ceiling collapse. He was, therefore, 60 seconds away from certain death.”
This is a developing story and will be updated.
