Ric Grenell wanted a job as secretary of state in President Donald Trump’s second term, but he landed at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts instead.
Grenell, who also holds the vague title of “special envoy” in the administration, saw his Kennedy Center gig announced by Trump in a Truth Social post, saying, “RIC, WELCOME TO SHOW BUSINESS!”
Of course, that welcome was headed by Trump’s promise to rid the cultural center of “DRAG SHOWS” and “OTHER ANTI-AMERICAN PROPAGANDA,” foreshadowing the hard-right turn the center would soon make.
However, Grenell has been less than dazzled by the production of things, according to The New York Times. In fact, he reportedly hates the gig.
Grenell, who was the U.S. ambassador to Germany during Trump’s first term, is hardly around and serially unavailable for meetings with his now 100-plus employees.
But the 59-year-old does have one small investment in what goes on in his new job. Over the past few months, Grenell—at the behest of his “anti-woke” boss—has been hell-bent on ridding the historically nonpartisan arts center of anything slightly resembling what he’d call leftist ideology and replacing it with more conservative, evangelical-friendly entertainment.
The Kennedy Center, shown in 2019.
And the cold-shouldered boss, whose newly hired Republican underlings have been labeled “unfriendly” and “unprofessional,” has ideas for how to carry this all out.
If you ask him, new programming for the Kennedy Center should become more like Paula Abdul, the 1980s pop star who is now likely more known for starring in reality TV shows. But given that Grenell was in his 20s at Abdul’s height of fame, this makes sense.
After all, the short-tempered MAGA loyalist has credited his qualifications for running an arts center to his husband, who is a former dancer.
“He would bring up his husband as a way to be like, ‘Well, I know a lot about entertaining dance because I fell in love with a dancer,’” Jane Raleigh, the Kennedy Center’s former dance director, told the Times.
Grenell’s cold shoulder falls in line with his reputation for having a sharp tongue online. From berating artists to carrying out comment-section kerfuffles on public Instagram pages, according to The New York Times, Grenell’s cattiness is well perceived even outside of his new workplace.
“You sound vaccinated,” Grenell said to a commenter who compared him with the Nazis in “The Sound of Music.”
Daily Kos reached out to Grenell for comment on these claims but did not hear back by time of publication.
The thing is, Grenell’s shallow experience and the Kennedy Center’s new anti-woke measures help explain why ticket and membership sales have declined.
Between Sept. 3 and Oct. 19, over 50,000 seats in the venue had remained empty—about 43% of total capacity—according to an analysis from The Washington Post.
But problems were there well before that. When Trump appointed himself as chair of the Kennedy Center board, replacing members with people more politically aligned, a mass exodus of artists and employees began. Even the popular musical “Hamilton” bowed out of an upcoming production.
And while Republicans are claiming they are just trying to make the Kennedy Center more inclusive for cultural conservatives, the response from showgoers—or lack thereof—paints a picture that they might be steering in the wrong direction.
But what do we know, maybe Grenell is right. Maybe a little Paula Abdul could fix it all.
