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President Donald Trump has officially commandeered the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Washington institution that’s partially funded by the federal government and has been known — up until now, at least — as a major hub for artistic and cultural performances.
Trump announced last week that he was removing the Kennedy Center’s longtime chairman, David Rubenstein, and naming himself the chairman. He also said he’d replace members of the board of trustees and falsely claimed that the center had hosted drag shows targeting young people. The context here is that conservatives obsessively complain about — and often have sought to ban — art and cultural institutions they don’t like. And drag shows, both real and imagined, have become a scapegoat for conservatives to promote their censorship efforts.
On Wednesday, the Kennedy Center’s new board officially voted to make Trump chairman. Here are some of the people he has tapped to serve on the board:
- Himself
- Second lady Usha Vance
- White House chief of staff Susie Wiles
- Susie Wiles’ mother, Cheri Summerall
- Deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino
- Trump megadonor Patricia Duggan
- Country singer Lee Greenwood
- Allison Lutnick, wife of commerce secretary nominee Howard Lutnick
- Sergio Gor, director of the Office of Presidential Personnel
- Emilia May Fanjul, wife of Trump donor and sugar magnate Pepe Fanjul
- Pamela Gross, first lady Melania Trump’s former White House adviser
- Dana Blumberg, wife of Trump-aligned businessman and New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft
- Andrea Wynn, wife of Trump-aligned businessman Steve Wynn
- Mindy Levine, wife of New York Yankees President Randy Levine
The Kennedy Center’s longtime president, Deborah Rutter, had recently said she would leave her position at the end of the year, but on Wednesday she announced her early departure. Trump ally Richard Grenell will take her position in the interim.
I can only imagine the sort of programming this peculiar assortment of people will come up with. Perhaps Trump-supporting rapper Lil Pump will have room in his schedule. Or, maybe, right-wing comedian Tony Hinchcliffe.
One of the best summations of what Trump appears to be after with this power grab, and what he stands to gain, has come from The Washington Post’s Robin Givhan, who wrote a piece explaining why Trump’s moves here are “petty but powerful.”
“The president doesn’t merely want to break the government bureaucracy. He wants to reprogram what the arts mean to the American people,” she wrote. “He is coming after their heart. Their imagination. Their elusive spirit.”
This passage from Givhan explains it all:
Trump is setting himself up to be the culture police. That’s tantamount to regulating the degree to which people are encouraged to think broadly, to conceive of ways to make the impossible a reality, to marvel at the fragile majesty of nature, to protest, to laugh, to find cathartic release. To dream with abandon. That is the power of the arts, after all.
I agree with Givhan here. Art can be a form of resistance in times such as ours, in which far-right forces are bearing down on people who dare to use the arts to express views they disagree with. All the more reason to be suspicious of Trump controlling one of the most esteemed artistic institutions in the country.