When President Donald Trump introduced himself as the chairman of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the host of the 48th Kennedy Center Honors on Sunday night, the spectacle conjured the image of an alternate timeline: one in which Trump never ran for president, changing the course of American politics and culture indelibly, and instead continued his career as a television star and socialite who does things like hosts the Kennedy Center Honors.
In reality’s timeline, Trump is both president of the United States and the self-anointed emcee of the prestigious black-tie gala, which this year honored glam metal band Kiss, country legend George Strait, actor Michael Crawford, disco star Gloria Gaynor, and Sylvester Stallone.
“This is the first time a president of the United States has ever hosted the event,” Trump riffed in his opening monologue. “I don’t know why. I don’t know why.”
The event capped a year of upheaval at the Kennedy Center. After skipping the event entirely in his first term in office, Trump stormed back into power with a plot to seize control of the prestigious Washington institution and remake it in his image. He fired its bipartisan board, including its chair David Rubenstein, and installed loyalists in their place. He named Ric Grenell—an abrasive former ambassador who reportedly took the job reluctantly—as the interim executive director, and himself as chairman. Grenell announced his plans to purge the institution, which puts on more than 2,000 performances each year, of “woke propaganda.” On Sunday night, Trump jokingly referred to the venue, a pristine monolith on the eastern bank of the Potomac, as “the Trump Kennedy Center.”
The president has shown an unprecedented degree of interest in the institution. “The time and effort Donald Trump has devoted to the Kennedy Center is unparalleled in modern presidential history,” Laura Ingraham, a Fox News host whom Trump appointed to the center’s board, says in an interview.
The results of this putsch on the Potomac have been mixed. According to The New York Times, ticket sales have plummeted some 50%, which shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise in a deep blue town that quite liked the woke propaganda being put on by the center. Dozens of staffers, including veterans of the center, have been fired or quit. On the other hand, Trump secured $257 million for renovations in his spending bill earlier this year, and Grenell announced over the weekend that the honors had raised an all-time record of $23 million for its 48th annual celebration. Befitting that haul, attendees were served Taittinger, a considerable upgrade from the “pisswater Chandon they serve the regular audience,” in the words of one attendee.
