The Trump-anointed board of the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts piggybacked the president’s name onto its title Thursday, after No. 47 had teased such a change for months.
The vote was unanimous, according to press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who announced on social media that the cultural institution would henceforth be known as the Trump-Kennedy Center.
Leavitt credited “the unbelievable work President Trump has done over the last year in saving the building” — in terms of its “reconstruction,” finances and “reputation” — as she congratulated not only Trump but JFK. She labeled them a team that would help the building “attain new levels of success and grandeur.”
Ex officio board member and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters the renaming is basically illegal without legislative action, since the board lacks authority to make a unilateral decision.
Later in the day, another ex officio board member, Democratic Rep. Joyce Beatty, said her mic had been muted, blocking her from voting or speaking.
JFK’s grandson, Trump admin-trolling nemesis Jack Schlossberg, also called out the unanimity claim, while crediting his own congressional campaign for the move.
“Microphones were muted and the board meeting and vote NOT unanimous,” Schlossberg wrote on social media. “Trump explicitly motivated to act by JACK FOR NEW YORK. Our campaign represents everything Trump can’t stand or defeat.
The Kennedy Center renaming comes mere months after Trump, in one of his first acts as the 47th U.S. president, fired most the center’s board members, including longtime president Deborah Rutter, and replaced them with allies who promptly installed him as chairman. An artist exodus quickly followed.
Trump’s stated goal was to purge the institution of “woke” programming such as drag shows.
His GOP cronies in the House have also voted to rechristen the Kennedy Center Opera House after First Lady Melania Trump.
The Kennedy Center was designated by statute in 1964 as a “living memorial” to the leader who established the Peace Corps, navigated Cold War conflicts, introduced the Civil Rights Act and launched the U.S. drive to put a man on the moon, among many other achievements before his assassination in 1963 after less than three years in office.
Trump, nearly through the first year of his second term, has slashed the federal government’s workforce, yanked international humanitarian aid, sent heavily armed ICE agents and National Guard troops to otherwise relatively peaceful city streets over the objection of local leaders and police, and, trashed the economy, according to a majority of consumers.
With News Wire Services
