A Kennedy Center board member has accused the White House of lying about the organization’s “unanimous” vote to rename the center the “Trump-Kennedy Center,” claiming her dissent was censored.
On Thursday, press secretary Carolyn Leavitt announced that the Trump-controlled board of directors voted “unanimously” in favor of the name change. Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, a member of the center’s board of directors, posted a video to
“What you probably heard was that there was a unanimous vote to rename the Kennedy Center to the Trump Center,” Beatty said. Advertisement
She continued: “Obviously, Congress has a say in this. This center – the Kennedy Center – was created by Congress. I think it’s important that we know that this is just another attempt to evade the law rather than giving the people a say.”
The president appointed himself chairman of the Kennedy Center when he took office earlier this year. He hinted at the name change in a Truth Social post in October.
A proposal to rename the center the Trump-Kennedy Center also came under fire Thursday from members of President John F. Kennedy’s family online.
“Maybe the board didn’t know about the Kennedy Center this Tim Shriver, Kennedy’s nephew, wrote on X, “Will they rename the Lincoln Memorial? Jefferson? It would be an insult to a great president. It would be an insult to a great president.”
Other members of the Kennedy family who have expressed concerns include Maria Shriver and Joe Kennedy III.
“The Kennedy Center is named for my uncle, President John F. Kennedy,” wrote Shriver, Kennedy’s niece. “It’s named after him. He was a man who was interested in art, interested in culture, interested in education, language, history. He brought art into the White House, he and my Aunt Jackie expanded art, celebrated art, stood up for art and artists.”
She added: “It’s incomprehensible that the sitting president would try to rename this great monument to President Kennedy. He thought it was acceptable to add his own name to President Kennedy’s. That’s crazy. It’s not.”
Joe Kennedy III added that changing the Kennedy Center “is like renaming the Lincoln Memorial, no matter what anyone says, you can rename it.”
In July, House Republicans introduced a bill to remove former President Kennedy’s name from the center and turn it into the Trump Center for the Performing Arts.
The center’s name change is part of legislation introduced by Rep. Bob Under (R-Mo.) called the Make Entertainment Great Again (MEGA) Act. Ender noted in his bill proposal that Trump, since being elected chairman, has aimed to “preserve the integrity of the fine arts by ending wake programming and rebalancing the Kennedy Center’s $234 million budget.”
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