President Donald Trump’s pets on the Kennedy Center board voted Monday to let him close it for two years for some amorphous reconstruction. Trump openly lobbied the board right before the vote, really hammering home the fact that everything is just a corrupt mess these days.
Trump worked himself into a froth about the state of the center, fully inhabiting an imaginary world where it had been “let go to hell” and was “on the verge of collapse.”
President Donald Trump’s name is added to the Kennedy Center building on Dec. 19, 2025.
In reality, the Kennedy Center underwent a renovation during Trump’s first term in 2019. The notion that in just seven years the building descended into near-collapse is an absurd lie—because Trump isn’t going to admit why he threw a temper tantrum to close one of the country’s premier performing arts venues.
First, Trump very much wants to turn Washington into a super-sized version of Mar-a-Lago, and he thinks of himself as a master builder—a man of unique talent and taste—so he’s going to take every opportunity to “renovate” buildings into gold-painted nightmares.
Equally at play is that Trump got very sad and mad that so many artists canceled performances after Trump illegally slapped his name on the building. Ric Grenell, who was saddled with running the center instead of getting the secretary of state job he wanted, oversaw an absolutely catastrophic collapse in ticket sales.
Grenell had no experience to make him capable of running the center, but now he’s out—replaced by Matt Floca, an equally unqualified pick with a bachelor’s degree in construction management. Guess it doesn’t matter if he has any arts experience, since all he has to do is oversee Trump’s “renovation.”
And how is this renovation going to be paid for? Who can say! Trump got Congress to give him $257 million in the so-called One Big, Beautiful Bill, but he also said that the project will cost $200 million. No one knows whether that means $200 million in addition to the $257 million.
Work continues on the construction of Trump’s ballroom, where the East Wing once stood, on Feb. 4.
Trump finally floated some confusing and crappy drawings of the renovation late last week, showing the new center’s exterior looking pretty much the same as the existing one. No drawings of the interior have been released.
All that’s been said about the interior—besides that it will be the most amazingest ever—is that some carpeting, wood flooring, and seating will be replaced, with armrests, incomprehensibly, made out of marble.
The color scheme is also being changed to Trump’s tacky, outdated black-and-gold style—ripping up parts of the center that were redone only two years ago.
Democratic Rep. Joyce Beatty of Ohio is suing in an attempt to stop the center’s closure, but all that the judge has granted so far is a temporary restraining order that required Beatty to be allowed to attend Monday’s meeting.
In a normal world, the existence of that lawsuit would mean that Trump didn’t get to start wrecking the Kennedy Center until it was resolved, but this is the man who tore down the East Wing without blinking an eye or seeking permission.
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Speaking of the East Wing—which is now gone so Trump can build his comically oversized bribe palace—there’s some good news! The ballroom will be under budget. Well, sort of.
“It'll be under budget other than we've upgraded it in terms of the marbles we're using. We're using onyx and stones that are incredible,” Trump said.
This “budget” doubled before anything was even built above ground, so it isn’t really a feat to now claim to be under budget. Well, under budget “other than …”
Were you hoping that Trump had his eye on another remodel? What if he replaced all of the White House columns? You see, they are Ionic, but Trump prefers Corinthian columns, which are on his personal properties. And since Congress and the courts are allowing him to do whatever he wants with the people’s house, new columns it is.
A cartoon by Mike Luckovich.
For no earthly reason, one of Trump’s minions on the Commission of Fine Arts, Rodney Mims Cook Jr., is pretending that this isn’t Trump’s idea.
“Corinthian is the highest order [of column], and that’s what our other two branches of government have,” he said. “Why the White House didn’t originally use them, at least on the north front, which is considered the front door, is beyond me.”
A White House spokesperson dutifully lied to the Washington Post to say that Trump has no plans to change the White House columns. In turn, Cook dutifully lied to say that he did not discuss it with the president.
If this gambit sounds familiar, that’s because this is what happened with the Kennedy Center renaming, where Trump was just so “surprised” and “honored” that the board voted to add his name to the building—even though the letters were ready to go on the building the very next day.
Trump isn’t going to stop turning Washington into his personal playground—and it’s just our luck that he has terrible taste.
