What A Day - The Kennedy Center Still Stands, For Now

Episode Date: September 18, 2026

A federal judge ordered the Kennedy Center to provide notice before making any major physical changes to the building, on Thursday, including demolishing it, as President Donald Trump has threatened. But why is Trump so obsessed with the Kennedy Center? And what will he do if his name doesn’t end up being enshrined on the building? To find out, Jane speaks with Arts & Government reporter at The Washington Post, Jonathan Edwards.Show Notes: Check out Jonathan's work – washingtonpost.com/people/jonathan-edwards Call Congress – 202-224-3121 Subscribe to the What A Day Newsletter – https://tinyurl.com/y4y2e9jy What A Day – YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/@whatadaypodcast Follow us on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/crookedmedia/ For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail]

I can't read President Trump's mind. You know, it could very well be a win-win for him. You know, he either gets his name up on there or, you know, he has a potential to, as he has with, you know, a lot of other projects around Washington, you know, the White House ballroom, the monumental arch to sort of literally and physically remake the nation's capital in his image. It's Friday, September 18th. I'm Jane Koston, and this is what a day. President Donald Trump hosted fishers, hunters, and anglers at the Rose Garden on Thursday evening and signed an executive order rolling back Biden-era public lands protections. He also said this.

I could have banned fishing. I'll tell you what. The power of this office is crazy. I could have banned fishing and driven Johnny right the hell out of business, okay? I think I'm going to do that. Ha ha ha. So funny, Mr. President, the power of that office is crazy. Speaking of which, Trump continues to threaten the existence of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

We'll get to that in just a moment. In subjects, Trump probably would ban, if he could, the Epstein files. California Democratic Representative Rochana and Kentucky Republican Representative Thomas Massey announced on Thursday that they have enough signatures. to get a bill passed that would force the Trump administration to release more documents related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. However, that vote likely wouldn't take place until after the midterms. And as the Iran war rages on, President Trump spoke to Axios on Thursday saying, quote, I have a big decision coming up.

Do I want to go in and annihilate them or do I not? It's a big decision. Anything could happen with me. I guess we're still doing this madman theory of, change? Sure. Meanwhile, today, hundreds of thousands of Iranians rallied in a government-organized show of defiance after months of war. The demonstrators took up arms pledging their readiness and the biggest demonstration of its kind since the United States and Israel attacked in February, because despite everything the Trump administration has said, the Iranian government is still in

charge of Iran. But I want to talk about the Kennedy Center. After months of trying to not talk about Trump's obsession with the Kennedy Center, the ongoing court battle and Trump's threats to maybe just bulldoze the whole thing has forced my hand. So joining me to explain all of this is Jonathan Edwards, arts and government reporter at the Washington Post. Jonathan, welcome to what a day. Thank you for having me, Jane. Appreciate it. So let's go back in time. John F. Kennedy, assassinated in 1963. Congress wants to memorialize him they create the Kennedy Center. So the Kennedy Center is technically a presidential memorial.

Is that right? That's correct. Before it bore Kennedy's name, it was the National Cultural Center, and it had been envisioned and created years before. As you mentioned, President Kennedy was assassinated in November, and Congress within two or three months got right on it, and renamed it in President Kennedy's honor. So what does that mean in terms of how it's treated as a federal building?

What does it mean about, say, renaming it, for example? That's at the center of Democratic congresswoman, Representative Joyce Beatty's lawsuit. The Kennedy Center Board of Trustees in December led by its chairman, President Donald Trump, and his allies on that board voted to rename it after President Trump, and they did so immediately. She's also a member of the board in the board minority ensued very quickly, alleging that the very law that you mentioned is very explicit. It names this performing arts center and what became a living memorial to President Kennedy after President Kennedy and Kennedy alone. And in May, a judge largely agreed with her on that point and was also very explicit, pointing back to that law and said, hey, this is what it says.

This is how I'm ruling. Take his name off. And that happened roughly two weeks later. So I have not been to the Kennedy Center since 2021. But the last time I was there, I don't remember it being in like terrible condition or disrepair. But, you know, there have been stories about like falling ceiling debris and some other problems. But as far as you know, is there anything so wrong with the Kennedy Center that it couldn't just be repaired with the nearly $300 million that's been allocated by Congress to repair it? Yeah, and that's sort of the second lane of the lawsuit.

Pretty much no one disagrees that the Kennedy Center needs repairs and has needed them for quite some time. And I like you, I think the last time I was at the Kennedy Center as a patron was to go see. Sound of Music with my mom and grandma a couple of years ago, if I'm remembering that right. And it seemed lovely. It seemed like it was in a great condition. I will profess I am not the most experienced, you know, patron of the arts, but it seemed great. I think that executive director Matt Floco would argue that a lot of the hidden elements of the center are what need repairs. And when he led tours earlier this year for Congress, members of Congress in the media, it was largely behind the scenes. It was like electrical boxes that, you know, are encased in

concrete. It was, you know, underground stuff, you know, the soffits, the overhangs, the underside of the overhangs, just the scenes, the things that as a patron you don't really see immediately. You mentioned, you know, there was that September 4th incident, you know, two weeks ago in which a portion of the ceiling plaster collapsed and fell 60 feet to the unoccupied floor below. Thankfully, you know, no one was hurt. But that is the most recent impetus that the center is citing for, hey, we need to close this now. It is a danger to people to patrons and employees. But even before that happened, you had Trump installing Rick Grinnell as acting president of the Kennedy Center back in 2025.

And it sounds like that didn't go very well. If go well would mean the Kennedy Center keeps functioning and people keep wanting to go there and perform there. What happened when Grinnell was in charge? Rick Grinnell was President Trump's, you know, original, you know, hand-picked, you know, top man at the center. after the, you know, Trump-led takeover in February of 2025, which, you know, happened within, you know, weeks, if not days of the second administration. And, you know, the consequences, you know, rolled out pretty quickly, but also, you know, extended over, you know, several months. You had a lot of artists canceling. There was some, you know, our reporting has showed that

there has been some fall off at that point in terms of, you know, ticket savings. and fundraising revenue. And then, you know, there were quite a few, you know, layoffs as well. So I think certainly quite a few employees and certainly, you know, the critics of the new sort of Trump regime would say that, you know, Grinnell was not a good steward of the building, of the venue of the institution. Yeah. And I think, like, there was all of this talk about how Grinnell.

was there to make the Kennedy Center less woke or something, which whatever that means from their perspective. But it just seems like Trump was so invested in taking over the Kennedy Center, but not very invested in the Kennedy Center being a functional place for artists or for events. And now, according to Kennedy Center officials, it's close to bankruptcy. How did that happen? And what was the state of its finances in, say, 2024? I'd be remiss if I didn't point to some of our recent reporting on the Kennedy Center's finances, which showed that back in 2024, this wasn't exactly a thriving performing arts institution that was just going gangbusters. I mean, there were a lot of headwinds in the industry, you know, inflation, you know, just kind of aging patronage and a struggle to attract young. younger viewers to some of those like fine arts art forms like, you know, the symphony orchestra to the ballet. And then there are some with the Kennedy Center specifically, you know, it's,

you know, it's a government town, you know, it's not as big or or as maybe well to do as, you know, New York. That being said, when, you know, Trump took over the center, there was a drop, you know, as I mentioned before, in ticket sales and donations. But that, largely seemed to kind of level off based on our reporting. We got some access to some, you know, confidential financial documents. And meanwhile, the center was, you know, touting, you know, what you said, hey, we're going to get in some of this non-woke programming performances that people actually want to see. And our reporting shows that that just really didn't happen. And then after the, you know, first name change, you know, President Trump's name actually

went on the building, ticket sales and donate. just cratered to almost nothing just in free fall. And yet at the same time, through all this litigation and in public statements, President Trump and his allies were still saying, they were still blaming the previous leadership for the Kennedy Center's financial struggles, and they were still saying that President Trump was, you know, the savior who would pull it up from the ashes and bring it to the, international prominence, the likes of which it had never seen before.

And that's just not what's happened. We'll get back to my conversation with Jonathan Edwards in just a moment. Water Day is brought to you by Nutrafol. Fall feels like the perfect time for a reset. New routines, better habits, and a little more attention to the things you may have put off over the summer. If your hair could use a reset, there's Nutrafol. Neutrophol is the number one dermatologist-recommended hair-growth supplement brand, and it's the number one hair-growth supplement brand personally.

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I think the first time that the Trump administration floated that was technically last month in a court filing in which DOJ lawyers for the first time just mentioned in the middle of it that, hey, if Trump doesn't take on this project, the center will inevitably succumb to ongoing deterioration and will need to be torn down. At that point, it was more of a assertion that other forces would would take hold in the absence of of Trump's involvement since then, and especially in the last couple of days, President Trump's comments a couple of days ago, right before, I think, boarding Air Force One. And then the photo that we have seen of him apparently looking at some sort of placard or printout that shows it reads Kennedy Center, demolished. Demolished. This is in all caps. But we actually have that clip of Trump on the tarmac. Let's listen to that very quickly. It's lost. The Kennedy Center for many years has lost tens of millions of dollars, even hundreds of millions of dollars. It's a loser financially. And many of the places like that, you know,

like Carnegie Hall and the various places throughout the country, they lose a lot of money. For me to go and fix it, I'm the one capable of fixing it and then have to subsidize it for years. years to come because you will lose with the Kennedy Center. They were losing hundreds of millions of dollars and sometimes hundreds of millions. This is before I got involved. So for the Trump administration, for me to get involved and to take that on long term and to carry it or to raise money to carry it, I think that the Trump administration should certainly have recognition.

Because frankly, if we don't do that, it's going to close. It'll end up being ripped down. It's in very, very bad shape, very dangerous safe. Yeah. So you have Trump saying that the only reason he would repair a living memorial to President John F. Kennedy is if he gets to have his name on that building. And if he doesn't get that, he won't repair it. But let's just take another second. So Congress has appropriated money to do these repairs, correct?

Correct. about $250 million. So there is the money. That money has been made available. But Trump won't let that money be used unless he gets his name on the building. Am I? Is that what is happening here? That's exactly what he said.

He said, we're closing it immediately. But, and he just made this incredibly explicit, we're not going to affect these repairs until, I forget the exact wording, but something like until me or my administration. get appropriate recognition? There are a couple of ways of reading this. All of them are insane to me. It's all insane. This is all ridiculous. But it seems as if what he's saying is, you know, kind of a, like a mob bus, like, nice Kennedy Center you've got. Shame if something happened to it unless I get recognition

for it. In your view, and with the full knowledge that we cannot see into the mind of Donald J. Trump, which is probably for the best, do you think he actually wants to demolish the Kennedy Center? Or do you think that he thinks this is just kind of like he's going to be. going to push everyone to basically accede to his desires. To what you first said, I mean, you almost exactly quoted Representative Joyce Beatty's lawyers from, you know, one of their court filings, you know, recently in which I believe was lawyers, Nathaniel Zelensky and Norm Eisen said exactly that. Hey, this is a nice Kennedy

Center. Shame if something happened to it. Likening it to a mob boss. on its face, you know, he wants his name on it and he got it, you know, he had six months of that, almost exactly six months to the day. His name went up in mid-December and it came down in mid-June. And we didn't really hear a ton out of the Kennedy Center, you know, during that time. Certainly not as much as we've heard in the last few days since a judge once again ruled that the center cannot put his name up on there again. So, you know, like you said, I can't read President Trump's mind, but, you know, it could very well be a win-win for him. You know, he either gets his name up on there or, you know, he has a potential to, as he has with, you know, a lot of other

projects around Washington, you know, the White House ballroom, the monumental arch to sort of literally and physically remake the nation's capital in his image. Jonathan, given that you just mentioned the White House, the ballroom, the alleged monumental arch, any number of projects that he's become obsessed with, the Kennedy Center has, again, joined this list. But it's interesting to me because, again, this is a memorial to a president who is not him. Why do you think Trump is so specifically interested in this memorial? Like it is not just a performing arts center.

It is, as we've said, a living memorial. Why is Trump so focused on getting his name on the memorial for someone else? One reason that I think that he and his allies have devoted so much effort to this is that the law allows it, or at least potentially allows it. He was able to come in, wipe out the existing board, replace those trustees with his allies and himself, and they then as a group elected him chairman. You know, right around the same time, shortly thereafter, he tried to exert similar influence with the Smithsonian Institution. You know, he tried to fire one of the museum directors, and that got pushback. you know, Secretary Lonnie Bunch said,

nah, uh, like, that's my job, not yours. And the Smithsonian's Board of Regents backed Bunch and said, yes, this is his purview. We stand by him. And Trump's not able to affect that Board of Regents in the same way as he was the Kennedy Center. The Kennedy Center board is made up almost entirely of presidential appointees. The Smithsonian's Board of Regents is made up of a couple of ex officio members, a half dozen members of Congress, and the nine citizen regents who are selected by Congress. So there's no direct path for the President of the United States to seize control of the governing body of that institution.

He's certainly kept trying over the last year and a half, but he does not control the Smithsonian. today. And he effectively does control the Kennedy Center, you know, save, you know, the legal challenge and the judge's rulings and orders in the case. So the Kennedy Center is for now effectively closed. They've even put up scaffolding around the building. But a judge ruled that Trump has to give 30 days notice for any plans to demolish any part of the center. So what comes next? What happens? Because this saga isn't going to go away. Keep your eyes peeled. It seems like it is, you know, drinking from a fire hose this week.

We started with a, you know, Board of Trustees packet and a Board of Trustees meeting. And it has just been seemingly a development, new development every hour, including, you know, some of the scaffolding being put up in the closure that you mentioned. I think Representative Joyce Beatty is going to keep challenging. that closure and say that it violates, you know, the judge's previous order not to do so, you know, we'll see if that gets traction with the judge. I know that critics of President Trump in his role as Kennedy Center board chairman and, you know, his allies on that board are scared that he is going to demolish the center in the dead of night. And those fears predate this week. They go back before the Air Force One photo, they go back before his comments about the center

being ripped down, they go all the way back to October 20th of last year in which the East Wing was suddenly torn down without notice. And that was really a clarion call for those folks. I think they felt like they were caught on the back foot. They were unprepared. And over the next three days, all they can do was watch as it was demolished. And they have been scared, you know, dare I say, terrified that that is going to happen to the Kennedy Center ever since. And so, I mean, they've been doing this, but especially after this week, they are trying to put themselves in a position where they can find out about a demolition

as quickly as possible and then do whatever they can to stop it. Jonathan, thank you so much for joining me. Thanks for having me. That was my conversation with Jonathan Edwards, arts and government reporter at the Washington Post. Before we go, is the AI apocalypse already underway, or can we get meaningful regulation before it's too late? On this week's episode of Assembly Required,

Stacey Abrams walks us through the steps you can take right now to prevent AI and data centers from harming your community. Then she sits down with the host of runaway country, Alex Wagner to discuss data centers, Jady Vance's disturbing performance of the GOP's midterm convention and voting rights, plus the riveting story of how a corporate titan

and three diehard Reagan advisors plotted to pack the Supreme Court. Tune in to Assembly Required on your favorite podcast platform or watch on YouTube. That's all for today. If you like the show, make sure to subscribe, leave a review. Let RFK Jr. have a little hobby and tell your friends to listen.

And if you are into reading, and not just about how the Health and Human Services Secretary told the anti-vaccine group he used to lead that he's going to investigate chem trails. The white lines in the sky left behind by planes that weirdos think are full of chemicals bound on killing us all. What a day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at cricket.com slash subscribe. I'm Jane Koston. And hey, look, whatever keeps him busy and away from making more kids sick.

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