President Donald Trump has already made his mark, literally, on Washington’s John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
Days before the center was to host one of its highest-profile events of the year, the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, a marble carver added the words “Donald J. Trump” to the list of chairmen inside the center’s Hall of States.
To one Kennedy Center staffer, a holdover from the “before times,” as this person put it, the sight of President Trump’s name carved onto the building was yet another reminder of the cultural revolution underway. So, too, were the newly hung 11-by-17-inch portraits of Mr. Trump, first lady Melania Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and second lady Usha Vance within inches of the Concert Hall stage door.
Why We Wrote This
President Trump has ordered the Smithsonian Institution to promote “American greatness,” taken over the chairmanship of the Kennedy Center, and targeted universities. To some, his cultural agenda is reminiscent of a Stalin-esque playbook. Others say it’s a needed correction to “woke-ism.”
“So every artist who passes by has to walk under Trump’s glaring face,” says the staffer, who asked to speak anonymously for fear of retribution.
Weeks after Mr. Trump’s takeover of Washington’s premier cultural venue – a move aimed at countering “woke” influences and “anti-American propaganda,” he says – the shock to the district’s arts world has not subsided. Many Kennedy Center performers have canceled or postponed their shows. Sales have plummeted, hurting the center’s bottom line. Free tickets have been made available for some performances just to put “butts in seats,” as one offer of tickets to the ballet “Coppélia” recently put it on a neighborhood email list.
It’s just one of many examples of Mr. Trump’s increasingly aggressive posture toward American cultural and intellectual life.
In late March, Mr. Trump ordered the Smithsonian Institution’s many museums, libraries, and research centers to promote “American greatness.” The executive order described a concerted effort by the left to “rewrite” history, recasting America’s “unparalleled legacy of advancing liberty, individual rights, and human happiness” as instead “racist, sexist, [and] oppressive,” and it tapped Vice President Vance to oversee the removal of “improper ideology” from all Smithsonian properties. Mr. Trump also directed the Department of Interior to determine whether public monuments and other memorials have been altered since 2020 to “perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history.”
He’s targeted America’s higher education as well. His threats to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars in federal research grants from major universities – in Harvard’s case, $9 billion – have led to lawsuits, protests, and, in some cases, capitulation by the schools.
Longtime Trump-watchers say they didn’t necessarily expect all these particular moves, but they see a certain logic at play.
“Taking over the Kennedy Center seems of a piece with taking over, well, everything else,” says Gwenda Blair, author of a biography on three generations of the Trump family.
Linda Feldmann/The Christian Science Monitor
The cultural coup de main has flown under the radar in some ways, amid all the other disruptive policy moves.
Mr. Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (not a true federal department), led by Elon Musk, is quickly dismantling, downsizing, and reorienting government agencies. The administration’s aggressive – and possibly illegal – deportation of immigrants has roiled the courts, and his unprecedented moves on tariffs sent financial markets into a tailspin. Big law firms that were targeted with punitive executive orders have agreed to pro bono work related to Mr. Trump’s interests.
But amid all the disruption and norm-breaking, it’s Mr. Trump’s apparently keen interest in shaping American culture, which was not a focus in his first term, that may be most intriguing. To critics, it’s nothing less than a sign of his authoritarian bent – reminiscent of the Stalin-esque playbook that made government diktats over artistic expression a feature of the old Soviet Union. To supporters, Mr. Trump’s efforts to steer America’s stories, collective history, and creative expression in a more traditional direction are a long overdue correction to “woke-ism.”
And while that conservative cultural agenda may seem minor compared with things like economic policy or immigration, its influence can be broad. In many ways, the stories America tells about its citizens and its history are fundamental to its sense of itself.
Mr. Trump has revived his 1776 Commission, a “patriotic education” project from his first term. And he is clearly focused on July 4, 2026, the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. One of his first executive orders focused on planning “a grand celebration worthy of the momentous occasion.”
A cultural phenomenon himself
The president’s interest in American culture aligns with his own backstory – first as an aspiring Broadway producer and, over time, as a cultural phenomenon himself. Be it as a New York City tabloid fixture in the 1970s and ’80s or as star of the reality TV show “The Apprentice,” Mr. Trump honed his knack for celebrity and ability to tap into the zeitgeist early on, ultimately taking it into politics – and straight to the White House.
“He’s had a cultural cachet and actively pursued it most of his adult life,” says Henry Olsen, an expert on populism at the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington. “You had Trump Airways, Trump Tower, the Trump Taj Mahal, the Trump divorces and marriages – and that’s before we even get to ‘The Apprentice.’”
It may well be Mr. Trump’s past as a TV performer and producer that best prepared him to run for and win the presidency, says Bruce Schulman, history professor at Boston University and author of “The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Politics, and Society.”
He cites a famous line from former President and Hollywood actor Ronald Reagan: “How can a president not be an actor?”
Mr. Trump is also, nearing age 80, rooted culturally in a bygone era, when being on the cover of Time magazine was a big deal and the Village People were a campy and catchy new group. His campaign playlist comes straight from the 1970s and ’80s, with the Rolling Stones, Elton John, and ABBA in heavy rotation.
Mr. Trump himself gives off a “throwback” vibe that, combined with appeals to masculinity, only enhances his charm to some people. That’s reinforced by the celebrities around him: Rapper Kid Rock, whose last song on the Billboard 100 was in 2008, recently joined the president for an Oval Office signing of an executive order on ticket scalping; he and retired 1980s wrestler Hulk Hogan were both prominently featured at the Republican National Convention last summer. And Mr. Trump’s signature rally dance – which caught on in the NFL last season, sparking controversy in a realm that seeks to be apolitical – is yet more evidence of his cultural impact.
Nostalgia for bygone decades goes hand in hand with an ideological cultural agenda that many conservatives have been waiting for decades to see fulfilled. To them, Mr. Trump represents their last, best chance to turn back the tides of leftist messaging that they say pervades American culture, from Hollywood movies, theater, and TV, to schools, libraries, and museums.
“Liberal institutions like museums, like the Kennedy Center, like universities, in particular, have to various degrees embraced or adopted the values of lots of liberation movements of the 1960s, from civil rights to feminism to gay rights,” says Andrew Hartman, history professor at Illinois State University and author of “A War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars.”
Until recently, Professor Hartman adds, conservatives haven’t felt empowered to do much but complain and create their own counterinstitutions, such as think tanks. Now, he says, Mr. Trump’s return to office is a vindication of sorts – especially after two impeachments and multiple felony convictions – and “Those around him feel like he can do whatever he wants, including take over the Kennedy Center.”
“Hamilton” is out, but “Les Mis” goes on
The takeover of the Kennedy Center – the capital’s cultural hub – is also likely meant to tweak the Washington elite, observers say. Notably, Mr. Trump didn’t cancel its federal subsidy, as he has many other federal expenditures. Instead, he has positioned himself to make programming decisions – including potentially hosting the Kennedy Center Honors, since he’s “the king of ratings,” the president was recorded saying at his first board meeting.
Charles Sykes/Invision/AP/File
At the session, Mr. Trump mused about awarding posthumous honors to Luciano Pavarotti, Elvis Presley, and Babe Ruth. He also gave a thumbs-up to the musical “Les Misérables,” which will come to the Kennedy Center this summer. And he criticized “Hamilton,” whose planned 2026 run was canceled by creator Lin-Manuel Miranda after the Trump takeover.
The president’s new role hasn’t resulted in “all MAGA all the time” programming. The Mark Twain prize ceremony honoring comedian Conan O’Brien went on as scheduled, including a supporting cast of sharp-tongued A-list comics. (The show will air May 4 on Netflix.)
The free offerings at the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage also continue to feature shows that might appeal to a more liberal crowd – racially diverse spoken-word artists, a Cuban rapper, a singer who combines “traditional jazz scat with Native vocables.”
Singer Eilen Jewell, long ago scheduled to perform at the Millennium Stage on April 10, justified her decision to proceed in a recent Facebook post.
“I do for the Kennedy Center the same as I do for my country,” Ms. Jewell wrote. “I stay and fight for the good that’s left in it.”
Still, the Kennedy Center employee who spoke to the Monitor depicts an atmosphere of fear mixed with determination among remaining staff, after senior leaders were fired and replaced with Trump loyalists.
Ric Grenell, who has fulfilled many roles in both Trump terms and is currently the center’s interim director, is on site more now than he was initially, the staffer says. But he has yet to have an all-staff meeting or formally introduce himself to the staff.
And the members of Mr. Grenell’s team who are there appear to have no experience in the arts, nonprofits, or philanthropy, the source adds. One item on the new team’s agenda: figuring out how to have Mr. Trump on site without getting booed. Mr. Vance and his wife were booed last month at a National Symphony Orchestra concert.
The new front office has “floated MAGA-only nights, also patron advisories,” the anonymous staffer writes in a text.
The Kennedy Center and White House did not respond to requests for comment.
But the staffer makes clear that they and their colleagues aren’t giving up without a fight.
“A lot of us, on a day by day basis,” the source says, “pick ourselves up and reenter this building with a spirit of preserving the mission, doing what we can to not abandon the ship.”
