Remember when President Donald J. Trump announced his intention to demolish the East Wing of the White House in order to build his ballroom? Of course not, because it didn’t happen. One day, it was just gone, demolished, because that was what he wanted to do. After all, Trump was the president, and the president doesn’t have to ask permission. The president is the Executive, and the Executive gets to execute any damn thing he pleases.
The Trump administration is, for the first time, threatening the demolition of the Kennedy Center if the arts institution isn’t allowed to follow its plans for the site, including adding President Donald Trump’s name to the front of the building.
This epiphany appears in papers submitted by the Department of Justice in response to a challenge by ex officio board member Representative Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio) to the latest scheme to circumvent the injunction against renaming the Center. After the overnight installation of Trump’s name above that of the Kennedy Center, and removing it behind tarps which remain to conceal the damage done, the board of Trump sycophants believed they found a way to circumvent the law by adding “renovated and restored by President Donald J. Trump” to the front below the Kennedy Center name, adding the phrase “endowed by The Trump Kennedy Center Fund” and naming the surrounding site “President Donald J. Trump Plaza.”
Or else.
The Board recognizes that President Trump’s efforts and prestige provide the sole hope for the Center’s financial survival, and structural renewal. The Board also underscores, and the undisputed evidence demonstrates, that without the prominent recognition of The Trump Administration, and President Trump’s efforts, the donors will not contribute, and the Center will continue to be in a financial and structural death spiral. The Trump Administration, and President Donald J. Trump, should, therefore, be given the respect and dignity of acknowledgement.
Whether the Kennedy Center is in such a “decrepit and dilapidated” state is unclear. It may well be in need of renovation, but to suggest that it’s about to fall down lacks any basis. Even so, renovating the Center is one thing. Renovating it only if Trump’s name goes on the front is another. The alternative, demolishing it if the court refuses to let Trump put his name on it, is extortion.
That it has lost significant funding because of Trump’s involvement and name change, on the other hand, is clear. Donors and season ticket holders, artists and performances, have fled the Kennedy Center because of Trump.
Given Trump’s sensitivities, his inclination to take impetuous actions out of anger and revenge such as he’s inclined to do when denied his way, it hardly seems a stretch that Trump would indeed demolish the Kennedy Center if his name isn’t plastered on and around the Kennedy Center. Given Trump’s lack of concern for destruction, it hardly seems a stretch that the nation might wake up one morning to see the Kennedy Center gone.
All three actions adopted by the Board are completely lawful. No statute names the Plaza or prohibits the Board from re-naming it. Just the opposite! Congress has authorized the Board to “maintain and administer” the “site” containing the Center, and that entails the authority to name it. In fact, just seven years ago, the Center named a substantial portion of its grounds, “The REACH,” without a semblance of protest. Nobody had any idea what it even meant. Evidently, Beatty contends that the Center’s grounds can be re-named only if the re-naming does not acknowledge President Trump. That position has no merit.
Likewise, the two planned inscriptions on the front portico are plainly lawful. An acknowledgement of the Trump Administration’s, and President Trump’s, present and future efforts to renovate and restore the Center is not a “memorial” under any plausible reading of the statute. Such acknowledgements of major donors are ubiquitous in similar facilities, and Beatty offers no plausible reason to suppose that Congress foreclosed them here.
Are these efforts “completely lawful,” even if their obvious purpose is to circumvent the court’s injunction and the statutory requirement that Congress, and only Congress, can change the name? That may be, or at least as far as the renaming of the Plaza is concerned. The contention that the Kennedy Center would fail but for Trump’s “prestige” may be laughable, but he gets to name the board and the board gets to name the plaza and, maybe, put up whatever words it chooses provided it doesn’t rename the Center itself.
Regardless of what happens, whether it’s the addition of Trump’s name on every piece of available marble or the demolition of the structure that refused to become a monument to Trump, it will be part of the Trump legacy of narcissism, putting his name on as many things as he can because no one else ever will.