Trump refuses to rule out demolishing Kennedy Center
President Trump is refusing to commit to not demolishing the Kennedy Center amid the legal battle over the performing arts center’s name and renovation.
Trump, in a new interview with Time magazine, was asked if he would commit to not bringing in wrecking balls to take down the center without congressional consent.
“I’m not committing to anything. We’re going to see how it plays out in court,” he said. “But if I build it, and if I agree that for the rest of my life, I’m going to be putting up $100 million to have it open to people … then I think the Trump administration should be recognized.”
The center’s board voted last month to immediately close the main building for renovations after officials indicated that the organization faces “certain fiscal collapse within weeks” and that it is “unsafe for continued occupancy.”
A decision from the D.C. Circuit court is being awaited to see if Trump’s name can be added to the building. It was added earlier this year but then removed after a court ruling.
Trump has since said renovations will not take place until the court rules on the center’s name change to include his name.
The president said in the Time interview that he’d be “willing to save it, but it’s in terrible, terrible shape.”
“Only I can save it, and I’ll tell you the biggest problem with the Kennedy Center — I can build it, but it will lose like many of those places,” he said. “If you look at Carnegie Hall, New York, and all these places, the artsy places, they lose tens of millions of dollars.”
He railed against the judge that ruled that his name had to be taken off the building, calling him a “radical left Trump hater.”
“Well, why would I want to stick with something that’s going to lose hundreds of millions of dollars, and I’m not even recognized?” he said. “It’s not me; it’s the administration.”
A recent letter from former Kennedy Center employees accused the center’s leadership of stopping planned waterproofing repairs earlier this year.
David Seide, an attorney representing the whistleblowers, said the center’s executive director, Matt Floca, knew about the issues “for years” but canceled the repairs despite the center receiving millions from Congress for its renovation.
“In sum, the evidence shows that the New Problems were in fact well known, were not considered to be high priorities and that millions in taxpayer funds were set aside more than a year ago to address them,” Seide wrote in the letter to Congress.
The letter also alleges Floca diverted the funds from Congress for repairs to make “unplanned cosmetic changes” requested by Trump to repaint the main building’s columns white last year.
Floca has pushed back on the allegations, saying “the safety of our patrons, artists, and staff comes first.”
“The Kennedy Center has known for years that the roof overhang leaked. What we did not know until this summer was how far the damage had spread inside it,” he said.
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