The deafening silence sweeping over Washington spells danger for democracy.
With the swiftness of a string of social media posts culminating in an AI-generated image of himself as an orchestra conductor, President Donald Trump sealed his takeover of a landmark cultural institution with the words, “Welcome to the New Kennedy Center!”
Out with the old, in with the MAGA.
Shocked and cowed, those ousted from the Kennedy Center’s board have remained mum, including now-former chairman David Rubenstein, a billionaire investor and owner of the Baltimore Orioles who has led the institution since he was appointed by President George W. Bush.
There is no grudge too small for Trump to seek retribution.
Payback
Snubbed by the cultural elites in Washington during his first term, Trump never attended the Kennedy Honors, an invitation-only event that every president or first lady traditionally attends. Trump bowed out after some honorees threatened to boycott, citing his reaction to the violent 2017 “Unite the Right” white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where a protester was killed, and Trump said there were “good people on both sides.”
A White House statement at the time said the Trumps would “allow the Honorees to celebrate without any political distraction.”
After the four-year hiatus, President Biden renewed the Kennedy Honors tradition, and when he left office, he rewarded his top aides, political friends, and allies with coveted seats on the Kennedy Center board, a common practice for an outgoing president, including Trump in his first term. But now he knows the ropes. He wasn’t going to wait until 2028 to reward his people, putting his people in place with lightning speed with himself at the helm. The new Kennedy Center board includes his chief of staff Susie Wiles, deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino, White House personnel office director Sergio Gor, Usha Vance, and Allison Lutnick, wife of Trump’s billionaire Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.
Among the 18 Biden appointees Trump displaced are former White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, longtime Biden adviser Mike Donilon, singer-songwriter Jon Batiste and Gray’s Anatomy creator Shonda Rhimes. Trump claimed on Truth Social that the Biden appointees are people “who do not share our vision for a Golden Age in Arts and Culture.” Musician Ben Folds and opera singer Renée Fleming quit.
‘Not Going to be Woke’
In announcing his takeover of the Kennedy Center, Trump told reporters during one of his rolling press conferences, “I’m going to be chairman of it, and we’re going to make sure that it’s good and it’s not going to be woke.” Just imagine the Trump-glorifying J6 Choir opera performances that he and his FBI Director Kash Patel have planned to remake the history of the assault on the Capitol.
Trump, who officially became chairman of the board on Wednesday, zeroed in on programming last year that included a “Dragtastic Dress-Up” for LGBTQ+ youth and their parents, a Dancing Queens Drag Brunch, and a Drag Salute to Divas preshow event, according to the Kennedy Center’s website. They represent a small number of the 2,200 performances and exhibitions the iconic institution presents each year.
For the MAGA crowd, this was like sending out a flare. “It’s symbolically powerful. Part of Making America Great Again, we’re not going to have drag shows at the Kennedy Center,” Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist and professor of government at Dartmouth, told the Daily Beast.
“It’s hard to see it as the most important threat under the circumstances,” Nyhan said, citing the looming constitutional crisis as Trump challenges courts to stop him. “It’s another signal of how an authoritarian leader can use state power to defeat the opposition.”
‘Visible Acts of Opposition’
Fired Kennedy Center President Deborah Rutter, who was already stepping down, issued a statement after Trump first made his predatory wishes known, saying, “There is nothing in the Center’s statute that would prevent a new administration from replacing board members.” The statement was later edited and then removed from the website, according to The New York Times.
“I don’t think the Kennedy Center is the linchpin, it’s early days, but it’s right out of the democratic erosion playbook,” Nyhan says. “I’m worried that it’s making opposition to the administration seem too costly. Visible acts of opposition can be threatening to authoritarian leaders, and people in the arts play an important role in that opposition.
“Some will speak out and others will be quiet because they’re fearful of harm to their career. It’s the ‘pacify the bully strategy,’ if we just stay quiet, they’ll forget about us and move on.”
‘Erosion of Democracy’
The Kennedy Center took down references to diversity, equity, and inclusion on its website after Trump’s executive order called these initiatives “illegal and immoral.”
There is silence at least so far from Rubenstein, the Kennedy Center’s longtime leader and biggest donor by far, having contributed $111 million to the institution. He has maintained a cordial, even friendly relationship with Trump, but his Democratic roots go back to the Carter White House, where he served on Carter’s domestic policy staff. And he loans his luxury home on Nantucket to the Biden family for Thanksgiving.
“The biggest danger in erosion of democracy is preemptive compliance,” says Norm Ornstein, a political scientist who has long warned about what Trump will do to expand executive power. “Big mistake,” he says, referring to the ease with which the Kennedy Center ceded power to Trump.
Ornstein explains that they were relying on the precedent set when Biden removed Sean Spicer, Trump’s former press secretary, from the Naval Academy advisory board. Spicer sued and the judge ruled in Biden’s favor. The crucial difference, Ornstein says, is that the Naval advisory board is an arm of government with one function, to give advice to the president.
‘Problem is Capitulation’
The Kennedy Center was created under charter by Congress as a public-private project with a board of directors serving six-year terms. There is a separate advisory committee on the arts, whose members serve at the pleasure of the president. But not the board, says Ornstein, who is adamant in making his argument that there is no explicit authority for Trump to remove people from the Kennedy Center board. “It would be shocking to me if they did not bring a lawsuit,” he told the Daily Beast.
Democrats are trying to find their voice as some counsel that not everything is a three-alarm fire. But sitting back and picking your fights has a price, cautions Ornstein. “The Tim Snyders and Anne Applebaums of the world (who write about the threats to democracy), they all say the biggest problem is capitulation. If he gets away with this, any shows that reference Black people or gay people—or anything he might not like or is written by someone who said bad things about him—GONE.”
And so it begins, a cultural center named after a revered former president gets redefined as the America Trump campaigned on that is free of Woke.
How long before we see a Trump banner unfurled on the facade of the Kennedy Center?
