Trump names ally to lead Kennedy Center, leaving its future uncertain
President Donald Trump named former acting director of national intelligence Richard Grenell as the interim executive director of the Kennedy Center in a post on Truth Social, installing an ally at the head of one of the nation’s premier cultural institutions, which Trump has vowed to overhaul.
The president’s authority to unilaterally reshape the board, install new staff and make himself board chairman is an open question for the public-private institution.
“So we took over the Kennedy Center. We didn’t like what they were showing and various other things,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday evening, adding, “But we have, I guess, a whole new group of people going in. ... I’m going to be chairman of it, and we’re going to make sure that it’s good and it’s not going to be woke.”
Trump said Grenell, a former U.S. ambassador to Germany, would lead the organization “on a temporary basis.” During the George W. Bush administration, Grenell served as a State Department spokesman to the United Nations. He has also been a Fox News contributor.
“Ric shares my Vision for a GOLDEN AGE of American Arts and Culture, and will be overseeing the daily operations of the Center,” Trump wrote in his post, adding that the center will not host “drag shows, or other anti-American propaganda.”
The announcement added to the confusion that has engulfed the Kennedy Center since Friday. The institution does not have a position with the title executive director. Deborah Rutter is the center’s president. It wasn’t immediately clear whether Trump was replacing Rutter or creating a new position for Grenell.
Neither the White House nor the Kennedy Center responded to questions to clarify the role and responsibilities.
The center was already in turmoil after members of its board of trustees received termination letters after Trump’s surprise decision last week to fire a large swath of its board and take the unprecedented step of naming himself as chairman.
A termination email sent Friday by White House personnel office director Sergio Gor to former labor secretary Hilda Solis, who provided a copy to The Washington Post, read: “On behalf of President Donald Trump I’m writing to inform you your position on the board of the Kennedy Center is terminated effective immediately. Thank you for your service.”
Emails with the same wording were sent to at least two other fired board members, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. It appears that about half of the board was terminated, along with chairman David M. Rubenstein.
The termination notifications represent part of a plan Trump posted to Truth Social on Friday that sent Kennedy Center officials scrambling to understand the president’s announcement regarding the storied arts institution. It also raised questions about how much power the president has over the institution.
“The Kennedy Center is an American Jewel, and must reflect the brightest STARS on its stage from all across our Nation,” Trump wrote Friday. “For the Kennedy Center, THE BEST IS YET TO COME!”
Some of the fired board members were baffled by the decision, fearful that Trump was trying to take over the arts. They were confused why Trump would become chairman of the board. The first lady is typically honorary chair, and Melania Trump is still listed as such on the center’s website.
“I don’t think it’s good, generally speaking, for the country to play partisan politics everywhere,” said a board member who was fired, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. “It’d be nice to have things where both parties are properly represented.”
On its website, the Kennedy Center removed the names of those who had been terminated from its list of board members and designated them as emeritus members. Among those who were fired are 13 board members installed by President Joe Biden at the end of his term. They included a mixture of political figures — such as former White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and Evan Ryan, the former White House Cabinet secretary and wife of former secretary of state Antony Blinken — and artists such as musician Jon Batiste and event planner Bryan Rafanelli.
Rubenstein, the billionaire co-founder of the private equity firm the Carlyle Group and principal owner of the Baltimore Orioles, was also reclassified as emeritus on its list of board members. Rubenstein is close to Biden and has hosted the former president at his vacation home on Nantucket.
When asked for comment, the White House referred The Post to Trump’s Truth Social post.
“No one has ever attempted to politicize [the Kennedy Center] and take it over the way President Trump has,” said former congressman Martin Frost (D-Texas), who has served as a member of the Kennedy Center’s Circles program since leaving Congress in 2005.
Frost emphasized that the center has always been a beacon of bipartisanship and suggested Trump’s decision could hurt the center’s attempts at fundraising.
“It can’t be helpful,” he said. “There have been significant individuals in both parties who have written very large checks.”
“I understand Trump wants to be a strong president, but there is a line that shouldn’t be crossed because this is important for our country,” Frost added.
The legality of the president’s changes is up for debate. When asked Saturday whether Rubenstein is still the chairman of the board of trustees, a spokesperson said, “Per the Center’s governance, the chair of the board of trustees must be appointed by the Center’s board members.”
Rubenstein and Rutter declined The Post’s requests for comment. Several other board members did not respond or could not be reached.
In an evening email on Friday to Kennedy Center staff, Rutter wrote, “There is nothing in the Center’s statute that would prevent a new administration from replacing board members.” This text was also added to, and later removed from, the center’s website. News of the website’s editing was first reported by the New York Times.
That statute says board members serve six-year terms; it doesn’t include language about removal.
The Kennedy Center spokesperson pointed to a 2022 federal decision, Spicer v. Biden, as a potential precedent. In that case, Trump appointees Sean Spicer and Russell Vought sued to stop Biden’s attempt to remove them from the Naval Academy’s board of visitors before their three-year terms were completed.
A judge dismissed their lawsuit, ruling that the law’s language on the board’s terms “did not insulate the plaintiffs from the President’s removal.”
Norman Ornstein, a political scientist and frequent Trump critic, has been urging the Kennedy Center’s board members to push back against the president. He asserted that the Kennedy Center is making a mistake by relying on the Spicer case because the Naval Academy is a government entity, while the Kennedy Center is a public-private partnership.
“All of these board members should sue,” Ornstein said in an interview. “I would be shocked if none of them filed a lawsuit.”
Several groups have had early success in the courts by filing lawsuits to block executive orders issued by Trump, including his attempts to end birthright citizenship and to trim the federal workforce.
But Ornstein said there are dangers involved in taking on a president known for aggressively countering his adversaries.
“I believe that there are entities that are very wary of directly challenging Donald Trump — even when he does something that hurts them or does something wrong — out of a fear that they will face his wrath,” he said.
Trump maintained a curt relationship with the Kennedy Center and the arts throughout his first presidential term, as he eschewed an unspoken tradition for presidents to attend the Kennedy Center Honors — an esteemed, bipartisan award ceremony — and tried to withdraw government financial support for other arts programs.
At the Kennedy Center gala, political attendees and artist honorees typically set aside their differences for the night. But in 2017, Norman Lear, Lionel Richie and Carmen de Lavallade said they wouldn’t be able to stomach Trump’s participation in the ceremony after he was reluctant to condemn the organizers of a deadly white-nationalist rally in Charlottesville. The honorees vowed to boycott if he appeared.
The president stayed clear of the gathering that year “to allow the honorees to celebrate without any political distraction,” the White House said, and he continued to skip the Kennedy Center Honors during his first presidency.
Biden’s return to the ceremony was met with standing ovations, his presence considered a return to normalcy.
In his Truth Social post about the Kennedy Center, Trump suggested drag performances were the main target. “Just last year,” he wrote, “the Kennedy Center featured Drag Shows specifically targeting our youth — THIS WILL STOP.”
When reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday asked why he wants to be chairman, Trump said, “Because I want to make sure it runs properly. We don’t need woke at the Kennedy Center. We don’t need — some of the shows were terrible. They were a disgrace that they were even put on. So I’ll be there until such time as it gets to be running right.”
He said he hasn’t visited the center — seemingly suggesting he never has — but receives reports about it.
“I didn’t want to go,” he said. “There was nothing I wanted to see.”
Tara Hoot, a drag artist who has performed at the Kennedy Center, blasted Trump’s original post as an attempt to divide and hurt people.
“They always have to find a scapegoat and somebody to blame instead of looking to fix the problems of the country,” Hoot said. “Look at the bird flu or the price of eggs or national security or funding for cancer research being taken away. And this is what he does?”
Late Friday, Trump posted an image of himself as an orchestra conductor, writing, “Welcome to the New Kennedy Center!” The image was watermarked by Grok, X’s generative AI tool.