Trump Made Chair of Kennedy Center as Its President Is Fired

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Source: New York Times

Trump Made Chair of Kennedy Center as Its President Is Fired
The president solidified his grip on the performing arts complex as the center's longtime president, Deborah F. Rutter, was fired.


Deborah F. Rutter at the 46th Annual Kennedy Center Honors event in Washington in 2023. She said on Wednesday that she was stepping down as president of the Kennedy Center. Pool photo by Ron Sachs

By Javier C. Hernndez and Robin Pogrebin
https://www.nytimes.com/by/javier-c-hernandez
https://www.nytimes.com/by/robin-pogrebin
Feb. 12, 2025
Updated 4:28 p.m. ET

President Trump was made chairman of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, he announced on Wednesday, cementing his grip on an institution that he recently purged of Biden appointees. ... The center's longtime president, Deborah F. Rutter, was then fired from her position, the center said. Richard Grenell, a Trump loyalist who was ambassador to Germany during the first Trump administration, was appointed the center's interim president.

Mr. Trump posted on social media: "It is a Great Honor to be Chairman of The Kennedy Center, especially with this amazing Board of Trustees. We will make The Kennedy Center a very special and exciting place!" ... Mr. Grenell visited the center on Wednesday, according to an official at the center. ... The center announced on Wednesday a new slate of board members -- all appointed by Mr. Trump -- and said in a statement that the new board elected Mr. Trump chairman and "terminated" Ms. Rutter's contract.

{snip}

The Kennedy Center has historically been run by bipartisan boards in the past. On Monday, the Trump administration officially removed 18 board members who had been appointed by former President Joseph R. Biden Jr., and the board chairman, the financier David M. Rubenstein. ... The center posted a revised list of board members on its website on Wednesday that showed how much things had changed.

While the board had been roughly split between Biden and Trump appointees until recently, it is now entirely made up of appointees of Mr. Trump. The new board includes a litany of Trump loyalists, including the president's chief of staff, Susie Wiles; Dan Scavino, a longtime Trump aide; and Usha Vance, the wife of Vice President JD Vance. ... Ms. Rutter, the center's president since 2014, said last month that she planned to step down at the end of the year.

Javier C. Hernndez reports on classical music, opera and dance in New York City and beyond. More about Javier C. Hernndez

Robin Pogrebin, who has been a reporter for The Times for nearly 30 years, covers arts and culture. More about Robin Pogrebin

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/12/us/politics/trump-kennedy-center-chairman.html

---

When you fire everyone on the board who hurts your feelings, things like that will happen.

Hat tip, Joe.My.God.

https://www.joemygod.com/2025/02/glorious-leader-im-honored-to-be-unanimously-elected-kennedy-center-chair-he-fired-entire-board/

Glorious Leader: "It's A Great Honor To Be Unanimously Elected Kennedy Center Chair" (He Fired Entire Board)
February 12, 2025

[greatauntoftriplets]

1. This is hilarious (in a way).

drumpf is one of the most uncultured people in the country. He's a total philistine.

[Mike 03]

4. Get ready to hear a lot of Wagnerian opera.

I know I shouldn't joke, but like you I find this almost funny. I don't think it's an overstatement to say Trump is culturally illiterate.

Someone else high up at the Kennedy Center quit today too. Ben Folds.

[greatauntoftriplets]

7. I saw that about Ben Folds.

Actually, I like Wagner. I'm just not willing to sit through some of his operas. Pieces like the Liebestod and Ride of the Valkyries are amazing.

They likely won't do anything like The Sound of Music either. It may be wholesome, but one of the messages is Nazis = bad.

[DENVERPOPS]

36. Oh great

Now Bang Bang Boebert and her most recent boy toy will be able to fondle each other and not get kicked out, like they did in the Denver Center for Performing Arts........The security cameras were good HD and show her getting high with a vape, and both of them feeling up each other as members of the audience in a sold out performance.........Google it, the complete video is outthere..........
Un-believeable.....
Mid performance an usher kicked them out of the play........(She flipped the ushers off as she exited the theatre........).

They looked like a couple of over sexed pubescent teens, groping each other, as if they were in the balcony, in a small town theatre.......How was Boebert to know that she couldn't do that during a performance in a big city performing arts theatre??????????

[C_U_L8R]

2. Now showing at The Kennedy Center

[mahatmakanejeeves]

3. DEI! I'm reporting you! NT

[Mike 03]

5. "Ted Nugent to replace Ben Folds"

Seriously, what artistic delights await us?

The Village People
the return of Jon Voight and James Woods to the theatrical stage! (Why not put them in Shakespeare? King Lear, starring Trump.)
Kanye West in "Fiddler on the Roof"

[Norbert]

34. He couldn't even replace Ben Stein.

[FakeNoose]

6. Paging Ted Nugent and Kid Rock ... new bookings await ... clear your calendars now

[Wingus Dingus]

8. Cultural degradation, on top of the degradation of government, military,

and society. It makes sense, really. That's usually how it goes.

[TurboDem]

9. I can't wait to see

The Possum Holler Cloggin Team and The Hee Haw All Jug Band!

[Dave Bowman]

10. Maybe they should make a play called: "Deliverance: The Musical"

[muriel_volestrangler]

11. I hope Jill Biden, Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton and even Laura Bush will resign their Honorary Chair posts

because there's nothing honorable about working with this philistine.

Renée Fleming, Shonda L. Rhimes, and Ben Folds have already resigned from their positions: https://operawire.com/following-trump-takeover-renee-fleming-resigns-from-kennedy-center/

[Oopsie Daisy]

12. Country Bear Jamboree ... Kennedy Center Award Winners

&ab_channel=DSNYNewscast

[SarcasticSatyr]

13. Dramatic reading of Mein Kampf by Scott Baio?

. . . . . . .

[maxsolomon]

14. Watch the next Democratic President NOT fire/replace all these MFer appointees.

Always the High Road.

[kimbutgar]

31. We will NEVER have another Democratic president.

The fix is in and they know how to rig the election especially when he fired all the government people who monitor our elections.

[maxsolomon]

50. You could be right.

I hope not.

The backlash cometh.

[keep_left]

15. Does anyone know what Trump's fixation with the Kennnedy Center...

...is about? This has to be some sort of Kulturkampf thing, but I'm at a loss as to why. I'm guessing it has to do with some obscure passage in the Project 2025 documents, or maybe it's because Trump overheard one of Steve Bannon's alt-right Nazi rants about "degenerate art".

Whatever the case may be, I've never heard an account of why Trump has suddenly become so interested in the performing arts. When (or if) we get a cogent explanation, it's bound to be equally entertaining and colossally dumb, I'm sure.

[jgmiller]

17. It's the only way he thinks he can hurt the Hollywood elites that hate him

The thing is it doesn't hurt them, it hurts people who believe in the arts. The Kennedy Center is a public/private where the federal government provides about 20% of the funding, the rest comes from donations and ticket sales.

What should happen but I'm afraid will not is that all of the donors who are aginst Trump should immediately pull their funding. As much as I love the Kennedy Center, we need a scorched earth policy. If he takes something then better to destroy it so he can't play with his new toy.

It also seems like he's violating the charter by firing them so I wonder why one of the big donors doesn't sue claiming their donations were given with an understanding of how the board was supposed to work and therefore he is committing fraud.

[johnnyfins]

38. BINGO

[oberle]

40. I know I'm never going back there until he's gone.

I live in the DMV.

[Botany]

16. The Kennedy Center honors:

Lee Greenwood



and Sean Hannity

[electric_blue68]

19. Sean Hannity? GAK. 😑

[Botany]

20. Get ready for the Ashli Babbit Award for being a patriotic freedom fighter.

Babbit not long before she was shot on 1/6/21 trying to break into an
office for Speaker Nancy Pelosi so they could hang her for something or
other.

[electric_blue68]

21. Ohhh, boy. No kidding. Ugh. Her own damn fault!

The guard had to stop her as an example for all the others behind her. And the guard at that point sermed to be alone right at that spot. It was no damn game.

[Botany]

22. When you are committing felonies and putting other people's lives in danger and a law enforcement...

… person points a gun at you and tells you to stop what you are doing you better stop.

I have some friends who are and were cops in Columbus, OH and many are right wingers
but they all have a common m.o. when they take their weapon out and tell you to do
something play time is over. Babbit was in the act of breaking into an office to find
Nancy Pelosi because she was so fucked up in her brain that she thought that Speaker
Pelosi was part of some kind of deep state conspiracy to steal the Presidency from
Trump.

You did notice all those MAGA freedom fighters run away after she was shot.
FAFO.

From wiki:

Despite multiple warnings not to proceed,[7] Babbitt attempted to climb through a shattered window beside a barricaded door into the Speaker's Lobby and was thwarted when she was shot in her left anterior shoulder[8] by a United States Capitol Police (USCP) officer.[9][10][11][8] After a USCP emergency response team administered aid, Babbitt was transported to Washington Hospital Center, where she died.[12][13] The USCP deemed the shooting was "lawful and within Department policy" and "potentially saved Members (of Congress) and staff from serious injury and possible death".[14][15] Babbitt has been considered a martyr by Donald Trump supporters, and by Trump himself.[16]

[electric_blue68]

23. I have NO Problem with what the guard did. Not sure I saw the footage past those particular insurectionists standing...

around her at first after she fell back on the ground.

Yeah, if a cop gets definative with his gun you better stop. Some people will try to run away if they're innocent, esp POC since they can roughed up or worse when arrested. We have got to do waaay better than this!!!

The whole J6 thing was so horrible and surreal!!!
I literally got up just when it was starting bc I'd stayed up so late for Warnock and Ossoff results. Was reading DU when suddenly OPs about insurection started popping up!

[Callie1979]

29. I just wish they wouldve done that at the FRONT doors & windows.

Drop 4-5 & the rest would have fled like roaches.

[electric_blue68]

18. Woah, the bastard went, and did it. BLARGH!

Other changes, and eliminations may be more important, and wide ranging, but damn; not unimportant either.

I guess my sister won't be taping it later in the year, then. We have a Holiday tradition if any one, or multiple people we like/love are awarded; she tapes it, and we watch it when I visit for our Holiday afternoon/evening get together.

Sigh... Bah!

[Initech]

24. He's really pushing it now.

[Evolve Dammit]

44. Dicktatorship begins

[cstanleytech]

25. The next Democrat in office is going to have a lot of work to fix this shit.

[kerouac2]

26. 3.2.1... kid rock to perform at Kennedy center

Wouldn't put it past em

[Lovie777]

27. I think it's not a done deal for shithole..

[Joinfortmill]

28. This is an obscenity

[kimbutgar]

30. You know he's going to change the name to the 🍑💩🤡 center when he completes the takeover of this country with his

Handler muskrat.


I am so disgusted more and more everyday for this outrageous bs. I realize with troll actions like this they ‘re trying to wear us down ! It is so exhausting!

[BidenRocks]

32. Most performers will likely cancel.

Award recipients will refuse.
The government owns the property so chump could have it razed.

[Music Man]

33. This is some authoritarian megalomaniac behavior, for sure.

What idiots like Trump (and his followers) don't realize is that the Kennedy Center's first performance was Leonard Bernstein's Mass, a counterculture protest work. Nixon didn't attend because of its controversy.

He's just a big, fucking dumbass.

[bronxiteforever]

35. America you fucked up big time.

A petty tyrant is your king.

[Initech]

37. This is some third world dictator bullshit.

[DBoon]

39. Will we see a stage adaptation of Triumph of the Will?

[bmichaelh]

41. Mark Twain Prize for American Humor

What will happen to the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor?

It has been given at the Kennedy Center.

More recent honorees like Jon Stewart and Conan O'Brien are not fans of Donald Trump.

He attacks any comedian that makes fun of him.

Also, Trump does not get satire.
Larry David did a segment on Curb Your Enthusiasm where he wore the MAGA hat in order to get out of certain social situations.

https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a30870485/donald-trump-curb-your-enthusiasm-larry-david-maga-hat-tweet-explained/

[sheshe2]

42. I love the title.

"He was made chair"

He had a gun in his hand and said 'I am taking it or The Kennedy Center Get's It'. I am a star and I can do anything.

He is systematically destroying all that is good in this world, the arts, our environment, everything.

[Marcuse]

43. How long until it's rebranded as the Trump Center for the Performing Arts?

[jayschool2013]

45. D.W. Griffith's "Birth of a Nation"

along with all of Leni Riefenstahl's films.

[CountMyVote4Reality]

46. Everything * touches dies. Only resistance can save US.

Let the backlash begin.

[Paladin]

47. MotherFUCK this shit. (nt)

[ShepKat]

48. I want to see a boycott

Nobody goes, nobody watches, nobody streams while the clown is running amusk.

Ah to dream

[mdbl]

49. Next Year's Honorees: Proud Boys, Village People

and an honorary title for all of the Jan 6 rioters.