In the usual tone of Donald Trump’s Washington, what started as a joke has now become an extravagant reality. It was then that some workers prepared in the morning (local time) to place on the facade of the Kennedy Center (KC), the great center of music and performing arts in the American capital, the name of the American president in printed letters, next to one of his most illustrious predecessors in office: John F. Kennedy.
He complied with a decision unanimously adopted the day before by the patronage of the KC, whose members I put behind Trump in fever, at the start of his second presidency. This under the pretext that the cultural center had been co-opted under the presidency of Joe Biden by the “ideological virus” woke up“. The vote was not a surprise, given that the Republican spent months toying with the idea. Nor was it possible to prove just how stocked Washington was after his return to power with allies ready to comply without too many questions with Trump’s bigger salvation plans.
However, it is not certain that the movement is legal. The KC received this name in 1964 by a decision of the American Congress, so it was understood that any maneuver to rename it would have to leave this very solemn place. True to his impatient personality, Trump has no time to wait, perhaps aware that the Republicans, who dominate the chambers of the Capitol, have begun to demonstrate a certain (and unprecedented) tendency to bring about the opposite.
And then, so, four workers climbed onto a moving platform to undertake the task of placing the first letter, Donald’s “D”, for the center to pass Actually Now call the Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts. The complex, which hosts a thousand events each year, of its own production or ajena, has several rooms, but above all two: the symphony (with a capacity of around 2,500 seats) and the opera theater (around 2,300).
The gesture culminates a year in which the president of the United States has frequently visited a place he did not set foot in during his first term, he has given his country carte blanche as decorator, ordering, for example, that exterior columns be painted white, he has canceled programs that he considers contrary to the MAGA ideal (like the Christmas concert of the Coro de hombres gays of Washington, celebrated successfully last weekend, left KC) and I have definitely put it at the service of your interests, including your personal interests.
The global draw
The new normal at the performing arts center has been on full display this month. One of the most anticipated occasions of the year: the annual gala that honors notable cultural figures, such as Sylvester Stallone and musicians, disco diva Gloria Gaynor and rock band Kiss. The other was the World Cup draw, which forced people to cancel previously made commitments to have the resort available for a week. This spectacle, in which Trump received a consolation prize given that he did not win the Nobel Peace Prize, resulted in a performance of Village People, the best saying, of what fell from Village People. The group played YMCAthe president’s favorite song.
During these months, there have been voluntary cancellations from musicians (Rhiannon Giddens) and actresses (Issa Rae). Soprano Renée Fleming and singer Ben Folds, who held positions as KC advisors, have resigned. Dancer Alvin Ailey’s company will take place in February alongside his annual residency at another city theater. There have also been losses among benefit recipients, and several US media analyzes have certified a decline in the sale of income, which Casa Blanca dismisses. This may lack scientific validity, but anyone who usually attends concerts by the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional or productions at the National Opera, which occupies one of the largest theaters in the complex, knows that it is easier than ever to get tickets and that offers to get them at low prices are also more frequent.
The news that the patronage had voted for the name change was announced by Casa Blanca spokesperson Karoline Leavitt of the jueves with a message in “I just realized that the Kennedy Center’s most respected board of trustees, made up of some of the most successful people from around the world, just voted unanimously to change the name of the Kennedy Center to the Trump-Kennedy Center, because of the incredible work President Trump has done over the past year to save the building,” he wrote. “Congratulations to Trump and President Kennedy, because you will make a truly wonderful team for a long time!”
Among the members of the patronage, which Trump himself chairs, stand out other names without accredited experience in cultural management such as his envoy to Venezuela, Ric Grennell, his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, the director of the Casa Blanca personnel office, Dan Scavino, the wife of the Secretary of Commerce, Allison Lutnick, and the second lady, Usha Vance.
The move to rename KC recalls other decisions by Trump, who arguably broke with the tradition and decorum of his second-term office by encouraging a Treasury Department project to collect a coin of his likeness to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the country’s independence, which will be celebrated next year, and to put his face on a large Labor Department canvas alongside Franklin Roosevelt, the New Deal president, or on access cards to national parks in Teddy’s side. Roosevelt, to whom the authorship of the protection of these natural spaces is attributed.
A mass by Leonard Bernstein, commissioned by Jacqueline Onassis to honor the memory of her first husband, served to inaugurate on September 8, 1971 a monumental performing arts center bearing the name of the president assassinated barely eight years ago. At the Kennedy Center, which was actually Dwight Eisenhower’s idea, power is coded in music on the banks of the Potomac.
Since then, this place has also been a tribute to Donald Trump commissioned by Donald Trump himself.
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