Washington (AFP) – He addressed the masses, or at least the media, from the presidential opera box. He led a board meeting. He said he never really liked the smash hit musical “Hamilton.” But Donald Trump’s message stayed the same throughout a triumphalist visit to the Kennedy Center in Washington: I’m in charge now.
The US president was making his first visit to the famed arts venue since installing himself as chairman and ousting its leadership in part of what he has called a nationwide war on “woke.” “We’ll make it great again,” Trump told reporters, saying the center was wasting money and in “tremendous disrepair.” “But it is so much like what I’m witnessing in other places — we have open borders, we have men playing in women’s sports. It’s all the same thing.” With that, the 78-year-old Republican then explicitly linked his takeover of the center to his wider blitz on liberals and his opponents in almost every area of American life.
His sudden changes at the Kennedy Center have faced opposition, with concertgoers booing Vice President JD Vance last week and “Hamilton” canceling a planned run there. The producer of the rap musical, which is about the birth of the United States and its first treasury secretary, said earlier this month that he was canceling its latest run in protest after Trump “destroyed” the venue’s “neutrality.” But former reality TV star Trump waved away the concerns. “I never liked Hamilton very much. I never liked it, but we are going to have some really good shows,” he said.
Trump’s show of power was the latest in the space of a few days to one of the institutions that he has upended since starting his second term, following a similar trip to the Department of Justice on Friday. He took a lengthy tour of the Kennedy Center, first visiting a basement arts area where he lamented that its previous bosses had built expensive rooms “nobody’s going to use.” The president then held a board meeting at the venue’s opera house at a huge, dramatically lit table placed on the stage. The board, which once held a cross-section of Washington cultural figures, is now stuffed with loyalists including Trump’s chief of staff Susie Wiles and Second Lady Usha Vance.
Then Trump ascended to the presidential box, draped in red velvet with a huge presidential seal, and answered a few questions from on high from the assembled media gathered below. The symbolism of Trump’s newly exerted control could not have been clearer. The Kennedy Center, a white marble edifice on the banks of the Potomac River, is home to the National Symphony Orchestra and also offers theater, opera, comedy and other productions. Trump, however, has vowed that “it’s not going to be woke” anymore and has railed at the fact that it used to host drag shows.
Ever the showman, Trump’s own performance at the Kennedy Center came with a surprise finale. As he left through the grand foyer, he said that on Tuesday his administration would release remaining files on the 1963 assassination of president John F. Kennedy — the man after whom the center is named. “That’s a big announcement,” Trump said next to a bust of his Democratic predecessor. “People have been waiting for decades for that.”
© 2024 AFP
