How Trump Could Destroy Kennedy Center

Could Donald Trump pose an existential threat to the survival of the Kennedy Center? “Yes, he can destroy the center and relatively quickly,” a number of arts leaders told Philip Kennicott of the Washington Post. Speaking anonymously for fear of reprisal, they suggested various scenarios that could cause substantial harm to the organization.

Trump and his surrogates could alienate important donors as well as artists and audiences. In 2024, donations accounted for $95 million of the $268 million annual budget; the federal government provided only $45 million, most devoted to building operations. It might have been easy to dismiss David Rubenstein as the Center’s chairman, but Trump will be hard pressed to duplicate his predecessor as a fundraiser and philanthropist.

While there are certainly many Trump supporters with money to give to the arts, how effectively can that money be tapped by an organization whose staff, while experienced, will likely be quite demoralized? How effective can Richard Grenell, the KenCen’s interim president, be given his inexperience in the nonprofit world? And what will be the public reaction to a parade of high-profile program cancellations and resignations, which is already underway, from the Center’s various constituent groups?

Cancellations so far

In less than a week, board treasurer Shonda Rhimes, National Symphony Orchestra Artistic Advisor Ben Folds, and Artistic Advisor-at-large Renée Fleming have all resigned their positions. Comedian and actress Issa Rae cancelled her mid-March sold-out appearance, and the Center preemptively cancelled the national tour of a children’s musical that explored LGBT themes.

Audiences bearing animus toward Trump may well decide to stop buying tickets, an important source of revenue. And the notion that a rapid rejiggering of program content will draw in new MAGA-adjacent audiences is unrealistic. Artistic planning is done months or years in advance. And abrogating existing contracts will both alienate artists and produce budget-busting financial payouts.

The most optimistic gloss on the situation finds Trump losing interest. But veteran Trump watcher Stephen K. Bannon, thinks otherwise. The reason for the takeover has more to do with humiliating elites than controlling artistic content. “It’s the high church of the secular, atheist administrative state…. That’s their playground,” he tells Kennicott. “Trump ought to fire them all and reprogram the whole thing.”

Taking control of the Kennedy Center aligns Trump with many of the autocrats—Viktor Orban, Xi Jinping, and Vladimir Putin—he so admires. But the control they exert over the arts is the result of decades of oppression. Barring some extraordinary circumstance, Trump won’t have enough time to establish that sort of control. But he will have enough time, and has already taken the first steps, to hollow out one of the country’s most visible and important centers for the arts.

When considering the sad state of affairs at the Kennedy Center, an old retail adage comes to mind—“If you break it, you buy it.” Donald Trump is in the process of breaking it. Now we will see if he can afford to buy it.

Pictured: Bust of John F. Kennedy at the Kennedy Center