President Donald Trump claimed today that his handpicked board of trustees' vote to rename the Kennedy Center in his honor was a signal of bipartisanship, even as he faces a lawsuit alleging the board's Democratic members were improperly excluded from the renaming vote.
“We're fixing up the, what was the Kennedy Center. I was honored when the board changed the name a little bit. Actually, it shows that the Republicans and the Democrats, they work together. It's really something – we work together,†Trump said at a Cabinet meeting.
Trump gutted the Kennedy Center's board last year and installed loyalists, including his chief of staff Susie Wiles, Attorney General Pamela Bondi, and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick's wife, Allison Lutnick, among others. The board also includes multiple Democrats, who serve in an ex-officio capacity designated by an act of Congress.
The vote to rename it the “Trump Kennedy Center†took place at a board meeting in December that is now at the center of a lawsuit from one of those ex-officio members, Rep. Joyce Beatty, a Democrat from Ohio.
Beatty has contended that she was prohibited from participating in the vote and that her line was muted when she attempted to express her opposition. She is now asking a federal judge to reject the renaming, arguing, “Congress established the Kennedy Center by law, and only Congress can change its name.â€
In a statement, Beatty said, “The idea that the renaming was an independent, bipartisan decision is fundamentally insane.â€
“Trump packed the board with his cronies to appease his whims regarding the naming, the partisan direction of the programming at the Center, and its closure,†Beatty said. “Trump has never been interested in working with Democrats to advance the Kennedy Center. Instead, he's trampled all over the laws and processes in place to protect arts independence and uplift our nation's artists.â€
This post has been updated with additional reporting.
