President Donald Trump promised to spend money revitalizing the Kennedy Center during his first meeting with the new board on Monday.
The Kennedy Center, a high-profile performing arts venue in Washington, D.C., is in for an overhaul after Trump appointed himself chairman of the board of trustees last month and replaced members appointed under the Biden administration with his hand-picked team, which caused a stir in the arts and cultural world.
“We’re going to spend a lot of effort, a lot of money on (fighting) crime, and we’re going to spend it on fixing it up,” Trump said as the board meeting began. “We don’t want graffiti on the beautiful, white statuary marble.”
He spoke about preventing crime and homelessness around the venue and about overhauling its schedule to include more crowd-pleasing Broadway hits such as Les Misérables.
“I’ve been hearing reports, and I thought it was very important to make this good. It’s a very big part of the fabric of Washington D.C.,” Trump said. “We’re going to make our capital great again just like we’re going to make our country great again.”
However, not everyone agreed.
Just days before the visit, Vice President JD Vance and second lady Usha Vance were booed by attendees for roughly 30 seconds during a National Symphony Orchestra performance. The vice president merely waved to the audience in response, but the incident spoke to the rift between the Trump administration and Kennedy Center regulars.
Richard Grenell, special missions envoy and now interim president of the Kennedy Center, reportedly emailed the center’s staff after taking over and said he takes “diversity and inclusion very seriously.”
“I have met with many of you, and I love that we are Christian, Muslim, Jewish, agnostic, gay, straight, black, white, Hispanic and absolutely different,” Grenell allegedly said.
On social media, Grenell has pushed for tolerance by chastising the mostly white audience that makes up the Kennedy Center’s supporter base. He took particular umbrage at the Vances being booed.
“It troubles me to see that so many in the audience appear to be white and intolerant of diverse political views. Diversity is our strength,” he said. “We must do better. We must welcome EVERYONE.”
Grenell’s comments are notable as the Trump administration has moved swiftly to slash diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives from the federal workforce and private businesses.
Trump’s displeasure with the “woke” Kennedy Center is part of what prompted him to seize control of the bipartisan institution last month. The president pushed out David Rubenstein, the previous Kennedy board of trustees chairman, in favor of himself, and also fired Kennedy Center President Deborah Rutter. Several board members, including TV producer Shonda Rimes, resigned in protest.
The Trump-aligned board includes the second lady, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and Fox News host Laura Ingraham.
Major celebrity artists, including Lin Manuel-Miranda, the brains behind the Hamilton musical, and actress Issa Rae, canceled events at the Kennedy Center to protest Trump’s takeover.
Among the board members present Monday were Vance, Wiles, Ingraham, Grenell, musical artist Lee Greenwood, and Fox News host Maria Bartiromo.
Greenwood, singer of “God Bless the U.S.A.,” was supposed to perform for the board during its meeting, Trump said, but it was canceled because of high costs.
“Because of the cost of the union structure, for him to sing a song just for the board meeting costs $30,000,” Trump said. “They wanted $30,000 to move a piano. So we can’t have that.”
Trump slammed other aspects of the center’s former management, saying $250 million was spent on “rooms underground” that “nobody’s going to use.”
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He pledged to make the Kennedy Center clean and inviting, a place that visitors from across the nation would be excited to visit.
“We’re not going to have people using such a waste of money, such a terrible waste … we’ll make it great again,” Trump said. “This represents a very important part of D.C and actually our country, and I think it’s important to make sure that our country is in good shape and is represented well.”