The Kennedy family is furious after President Donald Trump approved adding his name to the Kennedy Center.
Workers were seen on Friday attaching new signage to the historic building in Washington, DC. The updated name now reads “The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.”
The move followed a vote by a board stacked with Trump allies. Photos of the change spread quickly online and triggered instant backlash.
One response stood out.
Kerry Kennedy, the daughter of Robert F. Kennedy and niece of President John F. Kennedy, did not hold back.
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“Three years and one month from today, I’m going to grab a pickax and pull those letters off that building,” she wrote on X. “But I’m going to need help holding the ladder. Are you in?”
She added a sharp jab of her own.
“Applying for my carpenter’s card today, so it’ll be a union job!!!”
Her cousin Maria Shriver soon joined the criticism with a long and blistering post.
“Adding your name to a memorial already named in honor of a great man doesn’t make you a great man,” Shriver wrote. “Quite the contrary.”
She questioned Trump’s motives and went further.
“Putting your name above another man’s name on his existing memorial… What is that about? Truly? What’s that about?”
Shriver also raised a legal issue that has become central to the fight.
“There is no other president who would do this. None. Zero,” she wrote. “Congress named the performing arts center as a living memorial in 1964, and only Congress can change that law.”
She ended with a pointed comparison.
“A great man would have said, ‘Thank you, but the building already has its name. Let it stand.’”
Other members of the Kennedy family echoed those concerns.
Jack Schlossberg, JFK’s grandson, posted a screenshot of federal law stating that no new memorials or plaques can be added to public areas of the Kennedy Center.
“Plain reading of the statute makes clear YOU CAN’T DO THAT,” he wrote.
The controversy deepened after Ohio Congresswoman Joyce Beatty spoke out.
Beatty said the board vote was not unanimous, despite claims from the White House.
“For the record, this was not unanimous,” she wrote. “I was muted on the call and not allowed to speak.”
She also said the item was never listed on the agenda.
“This is censorship,” Beatty added.
Featured image via YouTube screengrab
