Today, Explained - Trump’s temper tantrum

Episode Date: September 21, 2026

President Trump got so mad about his name not being on the Kennedy Center he threatened to demolish it. We try to understand his obsession. This episode was produced by Dustin DeSoto and Avishay Artsy, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Danielle Hewitt and Gabriel Dunatov, engineered by Bridger Dunnagan and David Tatasciore, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Image of protestors outside the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts courtesy Sean Rameswaram. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. New Vox members get $20 off their membership right now. Transcript at ⁠⁠vox.com/today-explained-podcast⁠.⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

DC's hottest club Friday night was the protest at the John F. Donald J. Trump Kennedy Memorial Center, and I had to go. It had everything. Boomers with signs. I too have a dream. Reopen under new management. Boomers in T-shirts that said Lake Ontario. You do something worthwhile. Then you can start getting memorials. Boomers in a marching band playing Bob Marley and the White Stripes. There were chants. And speeches.

Music and the arts. is how we actually survive. And passionate booing. We're going to tell you how and why the president threw a big old Kennedy Center-sized temper tantrum on today, Explain from Vox. New from Nespresso. Blend wellness into your coffee routine

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with ginseng extract. Whatever lies ahead, don't change your morning. Let your morning change you. Discover coffee plus on espresso.com. Mr. President, do you have any reaction to today? It's late being named the best news show.

Wow. I didn't know that. I just you're telling me now for the first time. Sean Rahm is firm here with Jonathan Edwards from the Washington Post who's been writing all about the president and the Kennedy Center lately, and it sure seems like the president

is trying to shut the center down or worse, simply because he can't get his name on it, but we asked Jonathan if there's a smoking gun that proves it. No smoking gun, but I understand your concern or interest

in the timeline. I have a lot of those same questions. You have the order that comes out Tuesday morning from the judge saying you cannot add President Trump's name back on the building. I was very clear about this in May

and I'm being clear now. Do not do this. And then almost immediately the Board of Trustees holds its meeting in which our reporting shows President Trump was very unhappy with that ruling,

criticize the judge, and then the board ends up voting to close immediately. Shortly after that meeting, President Trump posts on true social, saying that the building is going to close immediately. Truth social. The board of the Kennedy Center today agreed, almost unanimously, to close the building for safety reasons and so that it can begin the process of reconstruction.

The closing will take place immediately. However, the renovation and reconstruction, which is a very large and complex job, cannot begin until such time as the D.C. Circuit rules on the board's approved name. And then following that, you have the executive director, Matt Floka, who was handpicked by Trump to lead the Kennedy Center, saying, I don't know anything about that. That's unrelated to the board's vote to close for two years. But, by the way, I am also closing the center because it is dangerous. this order of mine also has nothing to do with the board's vote to close for two years because that needs the judge's approval.

My order is because there are these imminent life safety issues, and we're going to close for seven days to everyone but essential personnel, and I will make a decision at the end of that seven days whether that closure needs to continue, and I'll keep making that decision every week on a rolling basis. So essentially, an indefinite closure. Tell us more about this meeting that transpired between President Trump and I believe the Kennedy Center trustees on the Tuesday between a judge saying no name and the center shutting down.

It was a previously scheduled board meeting, like you said, of the Board of Trustees, the governing body of the Kennedy Center. And at first, they were set to discuss two issues, one to once again take up, adding President Trump's name back onto the Kennedy Center, and two, to vote to close immediately. They had already voted to close for two years of renovations the month before, but management ahead of this meeting was now recommending that they do so immediately. that it was dangerous and they needed to close.

Ahead of that meeting, they removed the naming consideration from the agenda, but the judge's order came right before the meeting started, essentially barring the center from adding the name. And that seems to have kind of kicked off a really, like, tense meeting filled with personal insults between President Trump, who's the chair of, of the Kennedy Center Board and Representative Joyce Beatty, a Democratic Congresswoman who is part of the minority on the board that opposes Trump's takeover and transformation in the Kennedy Center. But she's also the person who sued him back in December and led to his name being removed six months later. This administration cannot just because they want to put.

but Donald Trump's name on a building. So what's next? The Lincoln Memorial? I mean, it's just not legal. And it's simple. We have it in the statute, in the congressional statues, clearly defining how you have to go about a name change.

These are two people that do not like each other. That much is clear. But my reporting shows that there are exchanges at board meetings in the past have largely been pretty civil, you know, let's just get this done. This meeting was not that. He went into a tantrum. I mean, let me just make it simple. It was the most unprofessional thing that I've ever witnessed. It opened with Commerce Secretary Lutnik, you know, suggesting that the judge had a conflict of interest because his wife, a lawyer, represents former President Joe Biden,

President Trump reiterated that, and that's something he said in months past, publicly in true social posts, in very Trumpian nasty language. And Trump repeatedly told Beatty that, oh, I don't know who she is, when he clearly does know who she is, insulted her by saying she was, had never built anything in her life. Everything from trying to say that I was an obstructionist, I was dumb, he said, I think you're incompetent, and I said, I know you're incompetent. Wow. That she was just opposing him on the Kennedy Center renovations and his name stuff to make a name for herself. For her part, you know, she called him ignorant and said what he's doing was ignorant, and his behavior was unbefitting of,

of being a president, you know, there's a lot of yelling, a lot of screaming. It was not productive. And he said he was going to hold me responsible if something fell out of the ceiling and killed someone. And I told him, I said, you're already killing people. We're at war. The anxieties people feel over what's going to happen to the Kennedy Center hit, like, the Red Alert alarm level, when a photo is published, I believe last week. week, Wednesday night, Tuesday night, of the president looking at a plan that appears to say

Kennedy Center demolish, then it's cut off? What are we to make of that? Is the president seriously considering demolition at this point? I mean, I can't get in President Trump's mind. That said, I know that the lawyers representing, Representative Beatty and Beatty herself are absolutely worried about this and are taking steps to know that if the bulldozers do show up, that they know as quickly as possible and that they're in a position to stop it. And this is the most pitched moment of those fears, but it long predates this week. It really goes all the way back to October 20th of last year when the Trump administration suddenly and with no notice demolished the east wing of the White House. That caught a lot of people off guard, including those at the Kennedy

Center. And at that point, the Kennedy Center takeover was already, you know, seven months in. So the folks who were specifically concerned with the Kennedy Center, this was a clarion call for them to go, oh, this could happen over here. And obviously, we don't have bulldozers, you know, destroying the Kennedy Central right now. But if we were assessing sort of the probability of the Kennedy Center being demolished, we went from a very low percentage kind of earlier this month, and it's ticking higher and higher and higher. And so those fears are starting to prove warranted. And do we have any idea where the battle goes next? We do. Court, which is where most of the substantive action has happened since Beatty filed their lawsuit in December. The federal judge in the

case denied Beatty's motion to have an emergency hearing on Tuesday's closure, but he did order the center to file an explanation, a detailed status report, as he put it, to explain what the center had described as a temporary closure by Wednesday. So we should know more. about the center's rationale. And from there, who knows what the judge decides and what legal developments unfold. The thing that has struck me is how strongly President Trump and his administration

has made the connection between, I mean, let's keep it real. Him getting his name on the center and him and his fellow trustees making sure that the $250 some odd million that Congress has appropriated for those renovations happens. Congress has already appropriated that money. Congress has already said, here, we're giving you the money, do this. And President Trump is saying, we're going to close it for two years for renovations, but we're not going to do those renovations until you appropriately recognize me and I don't know why I'm surprised. I should not be. But here we are.

and I'm sure I will be surprised again. Jonathan Edwards keeps being surprised reporting on the arts and government for the Washington Post. And up next on today, explained, we're going to hear from a reporter who sat down with the president and asked him why he keeps doing stuff like this. Why, though? Support for the showday comes from Found. For all those of you feeling lost, Found gives business owners one. place for banking, bookkeeping, and contract your payments without all your business's moving parts can finally work together.

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reflecting pool obsession, and then there's some more recent obsessions, a 30-foot colossus statue of George Washington outside the Smithsonian National Museum of American History and hot off the presses, let's also make that arch outside Arlington National Cemetery a sniper station drone base. Take that Paris? Ben Terrace is the Washington correspondent at New York Magazine. He recently sat down with the president to talk about his obsessions. We asked him what he learned. Yeah, I mean, so before I even talked to him, I did a lot of reporting about why he seems to be so obsessed with all this stuff.

And it's really like a legacy play for him, right? He's trying to build something that will last beyond his time here, both this time here in the White House, probably his time here on Earth. He wants to actually have physical monuments to himself. Somebody who's close to him told me that the president doesn't care that much about legislation. He doesn't care that much about, you know, the kind of nuts and bolts of being a president. He cares a lot about buildings and prizes. If he has buildings and prizes, then he feels like his legacy.

will go on forever. You know, that's why he wants the Nobel Prize. That's why he's building an arch for himself in Washington. It's really about, you know, a legacy that will withstand the test of time in his mind. Which is to say he doesn't really realize that the right legislation could get him more prizes. Yeah, I mean, you know, most presidents try to be very successful presidents and have other people build monuments for you. He's trying to honor himself, basically. It's something I asked him about, actually, when I sat down with him in the Oval Office, there was a viral moment from a few months ago from Senator John Ossoff, the senator from Georgia, who may run for president.

And he said at a rally that... He's building a monument to himself. But see, Atlanta, he's doing these things now because no one will honor him when he's gone. And so I asked the president this because, you know, I thought maybe he'd take a shot at John Ossoff or deny it. But I was very surprised.

He just said, yeah, that's true. Nobody will do it when I'm gone. When I'm gone, nobody will do it. It's nice to hear the future and current president agree on something. Yeah, good point. It feels kind of self-aware, surprisingly, of Donald Trump to not take a shot at John Ozza, but to just agree with him and say, yeah, that's exactly my motivation. Yeah, I mean, so part of me thought, okay, here's a guy who recognizes that when he's gone, history may not necessarily, you know, look fondly upon him.

But also there was a part of me that thought that that's not actually what he was saying. What he was maybe saying is, I'm the only person in the world capable of building something as beautiful and important as these monuments. you know, I alone can fix it, I alone can build it. You know, nobody else has the ability to do this the way that he has. So on the one hand, possibly self-aware that he won't be recognized the way he wants to be. On the other hand, maybe it's just, you know, a kind of egomaniac talking about how he's incredible at things and nobody else can do it. I think it's all kind of tied up in that he's not the most introspective person I've ever talked to, let's put it that way. But even the least introspective person in the world, when he gets to be 80 years old,

might start thinking about what's left of him after he's gone. And just to prove to the world how much he's wasting time obsessing over this ballroom and showing it off, he takes the time out of his day to give you a tour of the ballroom. Yeah, that's right. I thought I was going to get 20 minutes with him in the Oval Office, ended up getting 45 minutes in the Oval Office, and then an almost a 45-minute tour of the White House grounds.

He showed me the Rose Garden where they put statues and they turned it into a kind of paved-over terrace that looks like Mar-a-Lago. He showed me the presidential walk of fame where they have all the pictures of the presidents and then the auto pen for Joe Biden, a room called the Palm Room where he put down a new marble floor

that he was very proud of. The helipad was still being constructed. He walked me over there and introduced me to the construction workers as they were building this helipad. And then he took me to the ballroom itself and showed me this behemoth building. I mean, there's steel rising 70 feet in the air.

It's the size of one and a half football fields. He was bragging about how there's more steel there than in the Washington Commander Stadium that's being built. I mean, it's just like this enormous thing that you can't really see anywhere in Washington unless you go up the Washington monument and look at it from afar. And I was just in the middle of this thing. And I couldn't really believe how huge it was. And he wanted to show me, this is where the entrance is going to be. The chandeliers will be hanging here. He told me he could picture it all already because this is, quote, what I do.

He'll gaze out the window in the morning, first thing in the morning from the residents to see the work. He'll look out the window at last thing at night to see the work. I mean, he is monitoring this very closely. One thing that the ballroom especially shares with the Kennedy Center is that it feels like this administration is doing its darnest to outmaneuver the courts, to get around any legal questions concerning the work. Did that come up at all while he was giving you this tour? Yeah, sure.

When I was getting the tour, the Supreme Court had not yet ruled that they could keep going. There was kind of a pause on their ruling where they were allowed to keep doing construction while the Supreme Court figured out how they were going to rule on it. And so clearly they were racing against the Supreme Court to get as much done as possible. They really wanted to become like a fait accompli. They wanted it to look like the whole thing was done, you know, was beyond going back. And I was asking the president about this. You know, are you worried that the Supreme Court is going to rule that you can't keep doing construction unless you get permission from Congress? Congress does have the right to decide what happens to federal buildings.

So it would make sense that they would be able to make a decision on this. And he said he wasn't worried about it at all. He said, you know, the Supreme Court's going to make the right decision. The people want this. He's like, if I needed to get Congress's approval, I could do it, but it's not going to happen. And he ended up being right. He doesn't need Congress's approval. Supreme Court's letting them do it.

But Congress may get shaken up in about a month and a half. Is that on his radar? are? Yeah, I mean, he's aware. And certainly Democrats are aware. I talked to a bunch of Democrats for the story, mostly about what happens next. Are they going to start investigating the ballroom? Are they going to start looking at subpoenaing donors and looking at the contracts and figuring out if there was a pay-to-play scheme, if there was a legal construction happening? And Democrats are champion at the bit for that. You know, they're calling it a target-rich environment. They're ready to get subpoena power. And they're also talking about,

In 2028, you know, what do we do if we get the White House ourselves? Will we tear this down? AOC says she wants to turn it into a soup kitchen. You know, there's all sorts of ideas for it. I asked the president about that, too. I said, are you worried that Democrats get the White House in 2028? And they come and they tear down this ballroom right after you built it. And he basically said, like, I'd like to see them try.

He said, we're building this ballroom with nuclear concrete. That's what he called it. Nuclear concrete. Concrete that can withstand a nuclear blast. he's like, if it can withstand a nuclear blast, like I'd like to see Democrats try to take it down. He told me somebody could go to the ballroom with a jackhammer and spend two days straight jackhammering one column

and it wouldn't even leave a mark. And so he's basically daring them to try to tear it down because he's building something that he feels like, you know, can withstand a nuclear blast so it can withstand Democrats. I think it was Axelrod in your piece in your reporting who said the Democrats should name it after John F. Kennedy, which I guess I hadn't considered. considered who the ballroom might be named after because we always just say it's the White House

Ballroom. But I guess President Trump wants it to be named after himself, of course, connecting it back to the Kennedy Center, I guess. Yeah, I asked him if it should have his name on it. And he said, yeah, it should. He said, I don't know if it will, but it definitely should. And yeah, I mean, the Axelrod idea, just instead of tearing it down, just troll the president by naming it after JFK or name it after Barack Obama or Joe Biden or the auto pen or whatever you want. The Joe Biden ballroom would be particularly funny. I mean, at the end of the day, all of this is just about his legacy. That's what you learned by hanging out with him and talking to him about it.

Do you think by spreading his efforts across D.C., even into Virginia with the Arch, he's ensuring that at least something stands and that his legacy is ultimately secured? I mean, the Kennedy Center looks less and less likely. The ballroom seems like an obvious way to troll. but maybe it's the arch. Maybe it's, who knows, some project that I'm forgetting about at this moment because there's so many. I think that he definitely thinks that these buildings can withstand more than anything else. Legislation can be rolled back. Executive orders can be, you know, reversed. This is something that he feels like can last forever. I do think there's a world in which

Democrats tear down some of the stuff. The arch is a good example. I mean, the ballroom is hard to tear down, right? First of all, it's super expensive. It's huge. it also has to be replaced with something. You can't just tear it down and then leave a hole in the ground. You have to then build another ballroom, which would be kind of a crazy thing to do and take all this time and then become another story about how Democrats are spending all their time building a ballroom. Is it possible? Sure. It just seems a little bit harder to imagine. But the arch, you can see that thing getting dynamited on some Fourth of July and then just leaving it as a traffic circle. So I could see a world in which maybe some of these things get destroyed in a kind of, I don't know, epic fashion? Why not? I just, it feels like he might be onto something, which is that it would be very controversial to just tear something down for the sake of it out of spite. Yeah, he's right. No, absolutely. There's also two years left in his term. I mean, do you get the sense that this is slowing down or ramping up? It's hard to say. I have a hard time believing it's going to end. I mean, especially if he becomes a lame duck president and there's even fewer things he can do legislatively.

why not just keep building things and putting your name on things because there's nothing else to do with your time? He said that in the first term, the reason he didn't do a lot of this stuff is because he was too under siege, that it was a difficult time to build a ballroom because of the Russia investigations or the impeachment trials and stuff like that. And so maybe he gets tied up in all that same kind of stuff if Democrats take charge. But I also kind of feel like he'll have an easier time just trying to agree. ignore subpoenas. I just think it's going to be a really messy time. And so maybe he'll just hole himself off into a room somewhere, you know, designing more buildings because what else is he going to do? You'll have more time to talk to you. Yeah, fair. You can read Inside Trump's

Ballroom Obsession at NYMag.com. Dustin DeSoto and Avi Shai Arceau produced this one for today explained. Amnal al-Assadi edited. Bridger Donigan and David Tattashore mixed. Danielle Hewitt was on facts with Welcome Back. Gabriel. Donatav.