The Kennedy Center has been closed since July. The National Symphony Orchestra is scattered across six venues in the DC suburbs because its home is shuttered for a renovation that Congress approved $257 million to pay for. And this week, Trump said the renovation won’t happen unless the courts let him carve his name into the building. When a judge blocked the inscription for the second time, calling the board’s efforts “linguistic gymnastics,” Trump was photographed with a poster reading “Kennedy Center DEMOLISHED” and told reporters the place could be “ripped down” if he doesn’t get “recognition.”
Congress funded the renovation. The building is closed. The performers are displaced. And the president is threatening to leave it all in limbo unless a federally chartered arts center named after an assassinated president gets his name carved into the stone next to Kennedy’s. The judge was clear: you need Congress to rename a congressionally chartered building. Trump’s response was to hold the entire project hostage. A quarter billion dollars in public funds, frozen, because one man didn’t get a plaque.
Every president since Nixon attended the Kennedy Center without demanding they rename it. This one wants his name on the wall or the wall stays broken. The NSO is playing in a community college auditorium in Northern Virginia while the building sits empty in the middle of Washington. And the renovation that was supposed to keep it standing for another generation is a bargaining chip for a man who already has his name on plenty of buildings, none of them because anyone asked.