It may not be the Trump Administration’s action that’s gotten the most attention in the first two months. Still, it seems likely to have a significant cultural effect: Trump’s “takeover” of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, better known as the Kennedy Center.
Trump named himself the chairman of the arts organization while removing all of the board members appointed in the Biden Administration. Others, including Shonda Rhimes, resigned from the board. Richard Grenell, a longtime Trump loyalist but known more in the past for foreign policy postings, has been named the Center’s new leader.
The Kennedy Center will be non-stop Lara Trump, Ted Nugent, and Kid Rock.
Just a warning: when they round you up for deportation, they’ll give you a “choice”: Gitmo, or an Evening at the Kennedy Center.
In the future, there will be Trials at the Hague for this. pic.twitter.com/Ua6GsPtYNt— Frankp (@CogitoErgoWtf) March 8, 2025
“We took over the Kennedy Center. We didn’t like what they were showing and various other things,” Trump said in February. “I’m going to be chairman of it, and we’re going to make sure that it’s good and it’s not going to be ‘woke.’”
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The venue also canceled a February performance by The Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington, DC.
Time Magazine speculated that the annual Kennedy Center Honors will likely now honor conservative-coded entertainers, while those opposed to Trump are likely to avoid it. Also, the producers of Hamilton announced that they were cancelling an announced engagement at the Center.
Hamilton’s cast famously read a letter out loud to Trump’s first vice president, Mike Pence, when he came to see the show on Broadway shortly after the 2016 election. When he arrived at that show, he was greeted with a mix of cheers and boos.
Trump’s second vice president wasn’t greeted as warmly when he went to the theater this week.
While Trump can replace the board and the honorees at the Kennedy Center, he can’t so easily replace the audience. And when Vice President J.D. Vance appeared at the Center Thursday, that audience booed him.
WATCH: JD Vance was met with massive boos at a concert at the Kennedy Center tonightpic.twitter.com/M5DuWzcche
— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) March 14, 2025
Per Deadline, the vice president was at the Kennedy Center to attend a performance by the National Symphony Orchestra.
Photo courtesy of the Political Tribune media library.
