A bizarre twist in the Kennedy Center saga has exposed how much President Donald Trump struggles to let things go, his longtime biographer says.
Author Michael Wolff said Trump, 80, is not letting up on his crusade to remake the Kennedy Center in his image anytime soon, despite a federal judge’s smackdown of his brazen decision to put his name on the facade of the storied arts institution.
Trump loyalists on the Kennedy Center board voted Friday to add his name to the facade as an inscription beneath the main signage that reads, “Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump.”
“I was saying that, you know, he’s obsessed by the Kennedy Center because he wants the validation of the artistic community, something he’s avoided,” Inside Trump’s Head co-host Joanna Coles told Wolff. “And you immediately jumped in and just said, ‘No, no, he’s fixated about the Kennedy Center.’”
Wolff answered, “It is literally that things just get into his head. He can’t get them out of his head and has to have them happen.”
After Trump slapped his name onto the Kennedy Center, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper issued a scathing ruling in May stressing that “Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it.”
But the Kennedy Center board, stacked with Trump appointees, still approved an alternate plan to get the president’s name on the facade. It also approved a plan to rename the physical site “The President Donald J. Trump Plaza.”
“He baldly tried to contradict this and put his name on the Kennedy Center. The court came along and said, ‘No, you can’t do that.’ So there is no way for him to do that. But he can’t stop. He literally can’t stop himself,” Wolff said. “So now the proposal is that, in big letters, it will say ‘The Kennedy Center refurbished, rehabilitated,’ who knows what else. In very large letters, it will say this.”
He continued, “So this is an example of two things: that he has to get what he wants. That if he doesn’t get what he wants, he can’t move off. He can’t go forward. He’s stuck in place,” he added. “And then the second thing is that all of the people around him, what they have to do is figure out some way for him to get what he wants in some way that satisfies him. So I can see days and days and days of people sitting around talking. ‘How do we get his name on the building?’”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Congress named the center in 1964 as a “living memorial” to former President John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated a year earlier.
But Trump has been fixated on giving the Kennedy Center a MAGA makeover since he returned to the White House last year. Ric Grenell was installed as president, but he lasted just 13 months after a tumultuous term marked by poor ticket sales and backlash from artists, donors, and performers.
Trump also pushed ahead with a tacky plan to put his name on the Kennedy Center without congressional approval, but that effort also ended in curtains after Democratic Rep. Joyce Beatty of Ohio, an ex officio member of the board, brought a case.
“In scenes more reminiscent of authoritarian regimes than the American republic—the sitting President and his handpicked loyalists renamed this storied center,” her lawsuit said. “This is a flagrant violation of the rule of law, and it flies in the face of our constitutional order.”
