The Kennedy Center is in “terrible trouble,” “decrepit” and "embarrassing" to Washington, D.C. and “cannot survive” — structurally or financially — without Donald Trump’s name on the building. At least that's been the story from the Trump administration over the past year. As recently as Monday, lawyers for the Department of Justice argued that the venue faces “terminal decline” with its financial picture in a state of “crisis,” at risk of losing millions of dollars every year, unless the president’s name is restored to the performing art venue’s marble facade.
Donors will flee, financial contributions will “dry up” and renovation projects will come to a halt, they argued. But confidential documents obtained by The Washington Post paint a completely opposite picture. It’s Trump’s name that appears to have caused donors to flee and ticket sales to collapse, even as Kennedy Center officials and the Justice Department argued that the president was steering a financial renaissance for a venue that was facing “financial ruin” without him.
Ticket sales have been dropping in the months after Trump’s D.C. takeover, but both ticket sales and donations plunged after the Trump-dominated board of trustees voted in December to rename the center after him and put his name on the front of the building, records revealed. Trump’s name was removed from the building this summer after a federal judge ruled that Congress made it “crystal clear” that the memorial to President John F. Kennedy is only to be named after the assassinated former president, “and it cannot bear any other formal name or public memorial” based on a “unilateral say-so.” In June, the Justice Department argued that the venue stands to lose “hundreds of millions” of dollars without Trump’s name attached to the building, which government lawyers argued should be renamed in the president’s honor after he “donated his time, energy and unparalleled Construction talents” to renovating the venue.
Stripping the president’s name from the institution would send it into “financial ruin,” officials argued. But one week earlier, the center’s own financial projections showed ticket revenue and fundraising had plummeted after the name change, putting the venue on track to fall nearly $100 million short of its revenue target, according to The Washington Post. Donors disappeared, ticket sales disappeared, artists disappeared — like it was doomsday.” A new resolution approved by the board this month to put Trump’s name on the building claims Trump is “successfully engaging in fundraising efforts” and is “already raising hundreds of millions of dollars” for the venue through Congress and donations, “bringing the Center back from the brink of disaster.” But internal projections tell a different story, according to The Post.
The center budgeted roughly $220 million in revenue for the 2026 fiscal year, which began in October and ends September 30. By late May, officials projected the venue would bring in only about $124 million, The Post discovered. Officials cut projected expenses by roughly a third, but even that was not enough to keep it afloat — the center still projected a $23 million deficit, according to The Post.
A spokesperson for the Kennedy Center did not dispute The Post’s account of its internal fiscal 2026 projections. Despite losing court battles to put Trump’s name on the building, the institution’s Trump-controlled board of trustees approved a legally questionable workaround this month to keep the president’s name on the facade without “naming” the venue after him. The board voted to close the venue for two years as part of a renovation plan that is still tied up in litigation.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
