Even Trump doesn’t care, raising the question of why it’s such a big deal to the Trump Deranged. From the Washington Post:
“A federal judge issued a ruling this week temporarily blocking key parts of President Donald Trump’s effort to transform the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, throwing the institution’s future into a state of uncertainty…He installed himself as the Kennedy Center’s board chair and brought in loyalists as trustees who voted last year to add his name to the building. Programming priorities shifted, acts have withdrawn or dropped out, ticket sales plummeted and more than 100 employees resigned or were laid off.
“In March, the board agreed to Trump’s plan to close the center for a two-year renovation. But U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper on Friday granted in part a request from Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio), temporarily blocking steps toward the closure. He also ordered Kennedy Center officials to remove Trump’s name from the center’s building and branding.
“…Cooper has ordered the removal of Trump’s name from the building’s white exterior wall, a little more than five months after it was installed when the board, stacked by Trump with those loyal to him, voted to rename the institution “The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.” They have two weeks to remove it and scrap references to it from the website.
“Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name,” Cooper wrote in his opinion, “and only Congress can change it.”
That’s nice. I’m sure all of my friends and colleagues in the arts community will be happy now. Actually no, I know they won’t. My Trump Deranged friends and colleagues have made it quite clear that they won’t be happy until Donald J. Trump is dead and hanging like a pinata on a tree somewhere, and can be pelted with rotten fruit by people screaming like banshees. Ann Althouse this morning raised a fascinating conspiracy theory regrading “What’s going on here?” Her take: “I’m going to assume he didn’t want to fix this place, and the best — or most entertaining — way to avoid blame for letting it rot was to bait a judge into preventing him from saving it.”
Actually, he did more than that. When the President put his name on the building, it naturally caused the infants in the arts community to cut off their metaphorical noses to spite their faces. After duly noting how silly the re-naming of the building was in this post, I wrote in this one:
Ethics Alarms 
I recall Nancy Pelosi holding up the first bill to send out COVID checks to all of the people taking unpaid leave for the “two weeks to stop the spread” effort in March of 2020 until the bill included $25 million for the Kennedy Center.
(Imagine all of the homeless veterans who could’ve been helped by $25 million for a place none of us will ever set foot in.)
Reading up on it a bit, it seems the center has been plagued (Can it be called “plagued” when it’s intentional?) for years with the same sort of bloated staffing, unionization, and expenses as similar venues like the Metropolitan Opera.
Sounds like shutting it down for a while and cleaning house would be a reasonable endeavor no matter whose name is on the building. One could well question (as you did) the logic in even having the government operating such an enterprise that only accessible by, and serves, almost nobody beyond a tiny portion of the “elites”, unlike, say, the Smithsonian.
The thing should probably be privatized. Any number of entertainment venues survive entirely or mainly as commercial enterprises with revenues sometimes supplemented by corporate sponsors, selling naming rights, sports teams, etc., and serve wide swaths of the public.
After reading this a few times I was wondering what the main point you want people to take away from this post?
That what name is on the complex is, ultimately, meaningless. That a bigger deal was made of the thing because of anti-Trump hysteria. That it was a foolish and obnoxious and needlessly provocative move for Trump to add his name to what is basically a Kennedy family monument. That a court overturning the decision was inevitable, but again, a waste of time, expense and energy. That the artists who boycotted a venue because they hate Trump were only hurting their patrons. That Trump is hardly a culture fan, so this was so far down his list of priorities that the decision doesn’t even qualify as a slapdown, and anyone cheering it needs to get a life.
Pick one.
OR, you can settle on this: when I write about a developing ethics related incident, I will try to report when there is a new development or resolution.
Thank you. I wanted to push back on your points.
I’m not sure I buy your first argument. If the name is meaningless why did Trump need it on the building? You can’t argue the name is meaningless and then say it was meaningful enough for Trump to demand it as a condition of his help. If it truly didn’t matter, Trump should have been the easiest person to drop it. He could have also helped the center without his name or getting something in return
on point 2 the The bigger deal was made by a federal judge citing separation of powers. You can’t dismiss a constitutional ruling as a symptom of derangement. Ya know, the ruling wasn’t made by hysterical critics but by a federal judge, in a written opinion, citing separation of powers doctrine.
If you admit the original act by Trump was foolish, obnoxious, etc… so you’ve admitted what followed was mostly justified . You’re not being consistent here in your argument.
Also, the suit was inevitable because the action was illegal. Courts correcting illegal acts is what they’re there for! “Predictably unconstitutional therefore not worth addressing” sounds like an argument for ignoring executive overreach.
Boycotting artists only hurt their patrons… agreed, stupid.
Trump not caring…I dont buy that either…he posted about it immediately. And even if he didn’t, a president being stopped from exceeding his constitutional authority matters regardless of his emotional investment in the outcome.
My main confusion on this post, and why I asked you what your point was, is that you call the renaming “foolish, obnoxious, and needlessly provocative” but then attack people who agreed with you.
It feels like you want to be right about Trump’s mistake while making sure nobody else gets to be right about it too. It’s just a confusing post…since it’s a important legal story you argue it doesn’t matter, but the authority of Congress being protected by the court def matters
I think this is why the post was so confusing to me it was hard to follow your logic…we can’t fault people for refusing to accept an illegal act just because it might have been more convenient or beneficial to the center.
Thanks for the push back. That’s what I like, when it is substantive.
1. Trump didn’t “need it.” He does this kind of thing to troll his critics and haters, to show he can, to drive people crazy. And fore revenge: the KC treated him and Melania like dirt in his first term. It’s like taking out the trash to him.
2.I didn’t criticize the judge or the ruling.
3. Justified but wildly overblown, even sillier than the ballroom kerfuffle.
4. “Also, the suit was inevitable because the action was illegal.” Now a judge has said it was illegal. The language of the applicable law was arguably ambiguous, and legal experts disagreed. Trump had a colorable argument that he had the power, but ethically, it was wrong. Because you can do something doesn’t make it good or right to do it.
5. Trump posts about all sorts of trivia. That he does a mind dump about something is not proof that it’s high priority.
6. If a Democratic President had done the equivalent, there would have been no suit. The Republicans wouldn’t care, and the Democrats wouldn’t buck Obama. Again: because the name on a theater venue doesn’t affect what’s performed.
7. And you know there would be no boycotts.