# The Life and, for Now, the Death of the Kennedy Center

*The Daily* · https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1200361736?i=1000791602642

## Summary

This episode of The Daily examines how President Trump took over the Kennedy Center in his second term, renamed it after himself, and ultimately closed it after a court ruled the renaming required an act of Congress. Reporter Elizabeth Williamson traces the president's motivations back to his first-term rejection by cultural elites, and describes the venue's decline under his leadership. The episode ends with the center padlocked, 2,500 people out of work, and thousands protesting to mourn what the institution had become.

## Key points

- President Trump boycotted the Kennedy Center for his entire first term after honorees like Norman Lear and Lionel Richie declined to attend the Kennedy Center Honors.
- Eighteen days into his second term, Trump purged the board, installed loyalists, and made himself chairman, replacing David Rubenstein, who had personally given $111 million to the center.
- Under director Richard Grinnell, mass firings nicknamed 'Firing Fridays' gutted staff, including cutting the fundraising department, and artists began canceling performances.
- Trump's claim that the center was 'wokey' and elitist was a misconception; most of its programming was popular entertainment like Sesame Street, Garth Brooks, and children's ballet recitals.
- The board voted to add Trump's name above John F. Kennedy's on the building, renaming it The Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.
- Congresswoman Joyce Beatty sued, arguing only Congress could rename the center, and a court agreed, forcing Trump's name to be removed behind tarps in the middle of the night.
- After losing the naming battle, Trump claimed the building was in dangerous disrepair, citing a five-foot chunk of fallen plaster, and the board voted to close it entirely on September 15th.
- The closure cost 2,500 jobs, ended all performances and tours, and drew thousands of mourners and protesters, some forming a human chain around the building.

## Notes

### The Takeover
- Trump's first term was marked by rejection from cultural elites; honorees like Norman Lear, Lionel Richie, and photographer (who said "out now") declined to attend the Kennedy Center Honors.
- Eighteen days into his second term, Trump fired board members and stacked the board with loyalists including Susie Wiles, Usha Vance, and Howard Lutnick's wife.
- He replaced chairman David Rubenstein—who had personally given $111 million to the center—with himself.

### The Misconception
- Trump called the center "very wokey" and said it would be made "hot" again.
- Reporter Elizabeth Williamson says this reflected a radical misconception: the majority of programming was popular entertainment, including Sesame Street characters, Aretha Franklin, Garth Brooks, church chorale groups, and children's ballet recitals.

### Grinnell's Purge
- Richard Grinnell directed day-to-day operations, conducting mass firings nicknamed "Firing Fridays" where staff got 20 minutes to leave with security.
- The fundraising department was cut, with Grinnell boasting of reducing staff from 93 fundraisers to 17.
- Performers canceled, ticket sales plunged, and CPAC staged a conference there at a deeply discounted rate; FIFA held its World Cup draw there for free.

### The Renaming
- Trump emceed the Kennedy Center Honors and hinted his name should be on the outside.
- The board voted to rename it "The Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts," with Trump's name in the same font size on the first line.
- Congresswoman Joyce Beatty sued, arguing only Congress could rename the memorial, and a court agreed.
- Trump's name was removed behind tarps at 2:30–3:00 AM while a festival-like crowd waited outside.

### The Closure
- After the renaming loss, Trump claimed the building was in dangerous disrepair, despite having received $527 million from the big, beautiful bill for renovations.
- A five-foot chunk of plaster fell in the main foyer during heavy storms; nobody cleaned it up for two weeks.
- On September 15th, the board voted to close the building entirely; 2,500 people lost their jobs.
- Thousands protested, forming a human chain around the building, mourning a place that held first dates, Mother's Day traditions, and school trips.

## Transcript

[00:01] Oh, yeah. You know, this is what they play when the performance is about to start. Yes. You're calling people in.

[00:14] So a few months ago, I took a tour of the Kennedy Center with a tour guide there. Oh, can I get your name? Oh, Sandy Weiswasser. A volunteer named Sandy Weiswasser. Wow, I got to spell that out. W-E-I-S-W-E. She's 87 years old. She's a huge bundle of energy. And for the last 20 years, She's given tours every single Monday. Are you an artist yourself? Am I an artist? No, I play the piano, though. You do? And I tell a lot about the arts. I mean, I love ballet and opera and... Before President Trump took over the Kennedy Center, Sandy's tours were always packed. you But then he took over, made a lot of changes, and people stopped coming. And so on the day that I was there, the center was empty, and I was the only person on Sandy's tour. So this foyer apparently is one of the largest... And as she walked me through the center... The largest gift is this marble, which comes from Carrara, Italy. Beautiful chandelier. It's done by Dale Chihui.

[01:19] It was clear how proud she was of the place. I like the undulating quality of it. And how much she reveres it. No bed seat in the place. No, it doesn't look like it.

[01:34] But at some point in the tour, it occurred to me that she was speaking in the past tense. Well, that's the other thing when I give my tours now, do I give them? Present tense or past tense, it's very hard. What words to use for my verbs, anyway. And the tour she was giving was kind of a tour of wreckage. And what she was explaining and all of her memories started to sound a lot to me like a eulogy. So, I mean, all these little things about all the performers that are no longer here is very sad. And it also became clear that in Sandy's mind, there was one person responsible for all that had happened to the Kennedy Center. I mean, this place used to be really thriving and busy and crowded. Now it's very empty. And that was President Trump.

[02:28] From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily.

[02:38] Today, the life and, for the time being, the death of the Kennedy Center. My colleague, Elizabeth Williamson, brings us the story of how President Trump decided to take over and now shut down Washington's biggest, and most celebrated home for the arts.

[03:03] It's Friday, September 25th. Thank you. Elizabeth. Welcome back to The Daily. Michael, it's great to join you. You have been watching the Kennedy Center shut down for months, first gradually and then abruptly, when it literally... closed its doors about 10 days ago. So we're coming to you for what feels a bit like a post-mortem here to understand why President Trump has closed this place down. And I think... any Good Postmortem has to begin with the question... of motivation. How do you think about his motivation here? I think you have to go back to President Trump's first term. Remember, this was a really brutal election with a surprise result. He comes into the White House. He had been Roundly rejected by people

[04:02] cultural elites in New York City, the epicenter of the nation's cultural life. And he comes into Washington, where the center of the cultural life in the Capitol is the Kennedy Center. Right. And he's thinking, I'm the president now. Surely he'll be welcomed. more broadly by the culture once he's in the White House. But instead, that rejection really continued. And there was probably no better example in that first year than the annual Kennedy Center Honors, which is the Kennedy Center's biggest night of the year. And what form does that rejection take?

[04:56] at the Kennedy Center, or they were considering not coming. Why did you decide not to do that? Because he's made me feel it's not my White House. The first to say this was Norman Lear, who created All in the Family and many of our most beloved sitcoms and television shows. But I've gotten over that. It is my White House. It oughtn't to be his.

[05:26] photographer said out now no I just can't I'm absolutely not going I am 86 now I have all these years I have done what anybody asked me to and this is the first time in my life I've ever said no Lionel Richie, who was also an honoree that year, said, well, you know, I'm going to just play it by ear. I can't decide if I'll go. I must tell you, I'm not really happy as to what's going on right now with. the controversies and the weekly... And I think that that was quite a realization for him. He had gotten to the absolute top of our hierarchy and still that rejection continued. So Trump's response to that was to say, okay, if you don't want me, I don't want you either. And he just was generally a no-show for the entirety of his four-year term.

[06:20] . So for the next four years, Trump... Basically boycotts. the Kennedy Center and thoroughly writes it off. Yes. And so when he begins his second term in 2025, you know, this is now he's newly energized. He's got a different agenda when he comes in in his second term. As we well know, he is. Vowing to be people's retribution, but he's also remaking aspects of society, including our cultural life. He comes in as an anti-woke president. He won on that. So barely in office for a month, 18 days to be exact. He starts to launch a plan. To. Take over the Kennedy Center. And take it over how, just like logistically, what – power does he have over it and how does he end up Taking it over. So the president has the power to appoint board members to the Kennedy Center, and they basically oversee the running of the center itself. Typically, the board members serve six-year terms, so you had overlapping administration board members, appointees. Democrats, Republicans. Exactly. Yeah. And they work together, and that was the way the Kennedy Center was designed.

[07:45] And then stacked the board with people who were loyal to himself, his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, the wife of the vice president, Usha Vance, Howard Lutnick's wife. And so they came in and took over the board. And then their first move was to vote to replace the chairman with Usha. Mr. Trump and the existing chairman, David Rubenstein, he had personally given $111 million to the Kennedy Center, its facilities and its programming. So immediately – the president replaces this mega philanthropist, to the Kennedy Center, with basically himself. Yes. And what does... Chairman of the Kennedy Center Trump, do with this newfound power? It's a very exciting development. So President Trump convenes a call with his new handpicked board members, but he starts by bashing it as what he thinks it is.

[08:48] It got very wokey. a bastion of cultural elites. And some people were not happy with it. And some people refuse to go. And we're not going to have that. Doing programming that everyday Americans aren't interested in and might even be offended by. And he's going to change all that. I think we're going to make it hot. And we made the presidency hot, so this should be easy. and make the Kennedy Center hot again.

[09:18] I'm curious if there's any truth to what Trump is saying to this board. Is it? elitist does it have a left wing tilt so i think here is where you realize what a radical misconception the president was laboring under And partly due to the fact that for his entire first term, he didn't step foot in the Kennedy Center. So it has a symphony, it has an opera, but the vast majority of its programming is meant to be entertainment, entertainment, entertainment. popular works. I'll just... I'll go backstage. No, that's okay, that's okay. I know that song. That's about my favorite street. Oh, Big Bird! Big Bird! Elmo! So you're talking about performances... like Big Bird. and Sesame Street characters.

[10:23] Aretha Franklin. Ladies and gentlemen, Garth Brooks.

[10:35] Famous church chorale groups.

[10:40] The Washington Ballet had its children's recital there. It was their chance to dance on the big stage. Local little kids doing ballet. Yes. Entire classes of school children came. My own children's classes came. Kids could run down the hall, the grand foyer, which is like two football fields long. Mm-hmm. It was a wide open place. My older son mentioned that the first time he ever saw Jaws was projected on the side of the reach, which is the Kennedy Center annex on a summer night.

[11:14] Shut off that engine.

[11:17] Pretty popular. Yeah, exactly. It was the kind of place meant to be open for everyone. You're going to need a bigger boat.

[11:28] Well, Elizabeth, even if the president's whole approach to the Kennedy Center is based on a radical misconception of it. How does this approach work? get put into practice. in that first few months of him running it. So to direct the center's day-to-day activities, he brings on Richard Grinnell, who is a partisan warrior, very combative guy. And his job is really to remake the center. So he starts berating people in the hallways, complaining about their activities vis-a-vis programming. He conducts mass firings. They started calling it Firing Fridays, where you get an email and you get 20 minutes to leave the building accompanied by security. the staff, one of the departments he targets is the fundraising department. He boasts that he reduced the numbers of people who were charged with bringing money in the door from 93 to 17%.

[12:24] fundraisers. Wow, a pretty interesting decision for a nonprofit that relies, I assume, quite heavily on fundraising. Exactly. So as this purge continues, performers and artists who are scheduled to perform at the center start getting wind of this. And they're objecting and canceling. And he starts fighting with them, saying that the reason that they're leaving is because they are so woke and I'm trying to do, you know, a different thing here and it doesn't matter. But the end result was ticket sales are plunging. Audiences are plunging. Performances are being canceled. Mm hmm. So at this point in our autopsy, Trump via Grinnell, is taking actions... that become offensive to these artists who are turning around and undertaking the kind of

[13:15] protests that would seem... to make Trump's point about elitism, even if originally Trump's approach to the center was inaccurate. Yeah. So while Grinnell is claiming that this exodus of artists was due to ideological reasons, at the same time, he starts to use ideology as a basis for extending invitations to others to come into the center. Hello, everyone. Good morning. Like CPAC staged a conference on ending Christian persecution. Beautiful, beautiful and historic

[13:54] the Kennedy Center, Richard Grinnell, for giving us the space. They received a deeply discounted rate for renting the center. CPAC being the Conservative Political Action Committee, not a group we associate with a performing arts center. Exactly. This is the official bowl for the World Cup. And we are now going to do the draw. For free, FIFA came in for their draw that year, which was something that the president really liked and wanted. President Trump, up to you. Don't forget to mingle. I think I know what this is going to be now. it suddenly became the kind of place that would welcome him in the way that he expected to be welcomed in his first term. So while... Trump and Grinnell were complaining that the Kennedy Center had been captured by the political left. In fact, they were embarking on a project to sort of make it a political playground of the right. And I think the sort of apotheosis of this was the Kennedy Center honors. Not only did he attend, but he was a political playground.

[15:05] with all of his friends and his political supporters. - A very big hello and welcome to-- - He made himself the emcee of the event. - This is the first time that a president of the United States has ever hosted this phenomenal event. I don't know why I'm doing it. And as he was... you know, presenting the honors and speaking, he started to hint around at the idea that, hmm, maybe this place is so welcoming on the inside. Trump-Kennedy said, I mean, Kennedy said, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Maybe my name should be on the outside.

[15:48] Thank you. And less than two weeks later, His handpicked board met and they voted vote. to put his name on the outside of the center. They took the hint. They did. And his name went on the center one day later, and he got top billing over John F. Kennedy. And so then the center became renamed The Donald J. Trump and, on the first line... The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts on the second line. So Trump basically... puts his name... atop the original name, And my recollection is it's basically the same thing. scale of font. Exactly. And it had this sense of being less a renaming and more of a giant edit. But it was the way they could do it In the swiftest way possible. Elizabeth, what was the reaction when...

[16:52] Everyone wakes up to this edit. to the John F. Kennedy Performing Arts Center's signage. The reaction was swift and it was profound. This was... Plain and simple, now his. And anyone who passed by could see that. And this renaming... really was the beginning of the end, because it triggered a legal battle that brought us to where we are today, with the center closed, maybe indefinitely.

[17:34] We'll be right back.

[17:39] So, Elizabeth, how does Trump's decision to put his name on the Kennedy Center become, as you say, the beginning of the end for Trump? The center, tell us about this legal battle. So on the Kennedy Center board, there are these so-called ex-officio members. They're members of Congress that could not be purged by the president when he remade the board. And one of them is Joyce Beatty, a congresswoman from Ohio. She filed suit after he renamed the center. And her argument was that legally, this renaming could only be done by Congress. And what's her logic there? Well, it's based in the center's origins. So back in the 1950s, when Dwight D. Eisenhower established what he wanted to be a globally recognized cultural center, it took an act of Congress to do that. So in 1958, Congress passed legislation establishing what was called the National Cultural Center. And that was its official...

[18:38] The National... Cultural Center. Yes, exactly. And when Kennedy was elected, he and First Lady Jackie Kennedy were big champions of the arts and the performing arts in particular. So they worked with Eisenhower and his wife, Mamie Eisenhower, to build support and funds for the new National Cultural Center. After Kennedy was assassinated, Congress stepped in again and they renamed the National Cultural Center in Kennedy's honor as a living memorial to him. So Congresswoman Beatty's argument is basically that because Congress turned this into a memorial to President Kennedy, only an act of Congress can change the name back or to something else. Right. Not. the president and not even the Kennedy Center's board, only Congress. Got it. That's right.

[19:31] So what happens with a lawsuit? So pretty swiftly, a court rules that Beatty is right, that it would take an act of Congress to rename the building. And around the same time, the president, you know, hates this idea, of course, that his name would come off of it, that his name would come off the building. And so when word spread of that. Washington had a whole day knowing that this was going to happen, and this festival-like crowd gathered to watch. - So it was hundreds of people chanting, singing, you know, waiting for his name to come off. So finally, they rolled scaffolding into place, and the crowd really went crazy, thinking, okay, this is finally going to happen. And the director of the center could look out and see that this was something that the president wasn't really going to want to see on TV.

[20:27] Then they started to unroll tarps that would obscure the entire operation of removing his name off the building. Hide it, basically. Exactly. So behind the tarps, they started to take the letters off. But they did this at 2.30, 3 o'clock in the morning. By that time, most of the crowd was gone. And so there was a relative handful of us that could kind of sneak and peer around the edge of the tarps where they met the wall of the center. That was really all you had a window into. And then beyond that, they left the tarps up, where they remain to this day, so you could never see that his name had been removed.

[21:13] But of course, his name was removed, even if the removal remains hidden by a tarp. And given everything you've laid out in our conversation, I have to imagine that this was a really painful moment for Trump. Because his entire life answer to this wounded relationship he had with the Kennedy Center was just to take it over and to make it more and more his own. And for a brief shining moment, He literally has his name on the outside. The takeover is total and complete. But now that... is being... taken from him. Yeah, and you could see that... by the emergence of a different argument. vis-a-vis the Kennedy Center. And that was the president increasingly started to say that the center is in terrible disrepair. And this was really ironic because a year prior, he had gotten $527 million from the big, beautiful bill to do renovations of the Kennedy Center. And Congress appropriates money every year for maintenance of the Kennedy Center. So what was

[22:25] Center after Rick Grinnell departed was a guy whose specialty According to the president, he's a pro at construction. Why had this... center suddenly becomes so dangerous, as soon as this name came off the building, that it would have to be closed. So if I'm reading between the lines of what you're saying here, it seems like once the president... has lost the battle to have his name on the outside of the building. He... begins to lose interest in the Kennedy Center functioning at all Either it's mine or it's closed. And then he starts to go further and say, well, maybe it doesn't need just to be closed. Maybe the center will be demolished. It will be ripped down on social media, in Facebook. comments to reporters, he starts to raise the idea that

[23:20] it would be torn down completely. All the presidents talk about the need for renovations and this rather drastic thought that perhaps the Kennedy Center should be demolished all seems to rest on the idea that the Kennedy Center is in a really sad, sorry, dangerous shape. Is that true? True. Well, I'm not an engineer, but I can say that... Over the last few months, I've probably made 25 trips to the Kennedy Center. I never saw anything that suggested a serious danger to people's safety. But... What happened earlier this month was that heavy storms in Washington brought down a five-foot chunk of plaster in the main foyer of the building. This is something that, you know, definitely needed to be repaired.

[24:09] But instead of just making that repair, they closed that enormous section of the building They found security camera footage of the plaster actually falling, spread that around on social media. They measured the shards of plaster as they lay on the carpet. They measured the size of what they called a debris field, like this was a plane crash. Hmm. Nobody cleaned up the mess left by the falling plaster for two weeks. In the meantime, this chunk of plaster became a sort of politically tinged argument for Giving the president what he wants, a closure of the place, which is exactly what happened on September 15th. The Kennedy Center board closed. voted to close the building entirely. Elizabeth, what's the impact of the Kennedy Center on

[25:03] being totally closed now. 2,500 people have lost their jobs. There are no paid performances there any longer where there used to be many in a day. There are no tours. No one sees the exhibits, the art, anything. It's just the absolute antithesis of how Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy and Congress conceived it. John F. Kennedy Center for the Glory of Us. And that led to protests last week. by thousands of people. This place has a lot of personal memories for me, times that I went on my first date here, came here with my family, came here with my husband. Who came just to say Sure, this needs to reopen. but also just to mourn all that had happened that had gotten it to that point. I played 18 hours Christmas music in the Grand Hall at Christmas time this last year. People who had a lot of memories in the place. Well, when my mom was alive, every Mother's Day we got her a ticket to the summer musical. And that was like an annual family tradition.

[26:14] and they wanted to share what it meant to them. I mean, it's a beloved art space for all of us. an affordable option for many people if you couldn't afford to buy tickets. It put the lie to the way the president had characterized the Kennedy Center, that it was a place that welcomed everybody. that really set out to bring people in. not to exclude them.

[26:44] And at one point during the protests, people lay tans. to form a human chain around the building. And it was like they were protecting something that was a living thing. And to them, it was a living thing. But now it was padlocked and closed and fenced off.

[27:10] The opera has moved elsewhere. They perform outside the Kennedy Center now. The Symphony performs elsewhere. The performances that were there took years to book. You're saying firing up this particular machine, if it were to happen even tomorrow, would take a very, very long time. The arts just don't show up in a center like this. On a dime. Exactly. And now that Trump has so thoroughly politicized it and personalized it, made the Kennedy Center entirely about himself, all that is gone. there's no guarantee even if it does return. that it could ever be the same as it was before.

[28:06] Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Bye. Bye.

[28:20] Well, Elizabeth, thank you very much. We appreciate it. Thank you, Michael. Bye. Thank you. We'll be right back.

[28:42] Here's what else you need to know today. Some MSNOW journalists are just now regaining access to the White House, happening as we have been speaking right now. On Thursday afternoon, reporters for CNN, Politico, and MSNOW were allowed to re-enter the White House grounds after a federal judge ruled hours earlier that the president's decision to ban them was likely unconstitutional. Laura, if you hear me, I want to get to you right away for the latest in what your experience has been. Yeah, I hear you, Peter. So I was just allowed back into the White House through the Northwest gate. Trump's compliance with the ruling brought to an end for now. a days-long standoff over press freedom. That standoff triggered a rare act of coordinated protest by major TV networks, which have refused to record and distribute video of the president as they usually do.

[29:40] And the average 30-year mortgage rate surpassed 7% this week, an ominous sign for a housing market in which prices are already historically high and out of reach.

[29:56] borrowing costs this steep. Potential buyers increasingly unlikely to purchase a home.

[30:07] Today's episode was produced by Lexi Dio, Jack Dissidoro, and Eric Krupke. It was edited by Patricia Willans, with help from Michael Benoit. contains original music by Diane Wong. and music by Marion Lozano will read. Alicia Baitube, and Dan Powell, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Wonderly. Special thanks to Afim Shapiro. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you on Sunday.