For The Righteousness of Cause?
Opinion by Ben Everidge for Thomas
Photo Credit: The White House Press Office
The Kennedy Center Debacle in Perspective …
On the 23rd day of his second-term presidency, Donald Trump fired the chair and the president of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and installed himself as the new board chairman.
President Trump also removed board members appointed by a previous United States president and named an interim executive director of the Kennedy Center, a Make America Great Again loyalist who comes with a boatload of political career controversy, Richard Grenell.
Critics of the board takeover argue that the Kennedy Center has lost its independence, which is a threat to the arts. Upon taking over the Kennedy Center, on the other hand, Grenell predicted President Trump’s leadership would see a “Golden Age of the Arts” in the nation’s capital.
Grenell justified the Kennedy Center takeover, contending, "The Kennedy Center has zero cash on hand and zero dollars in reserves – while taking tens of millions of dollars in public funds.” [i]
Righteousness is defined as the quality of being morally right or justifiable.
The decision by the president of the United States to take over the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts from the nation by summarily dismissing its volunteer board of directors and then installing himself as the board chairman was not a righteous or justifiable act. Morally, ethically, politically, or economically.
Understandably, the President’s Kennedy Center actions stunned political and philanthropic communities. In the immediate days after the executive executions, ticket sales plummeted a staggering fifty percent, and upcoming performers canceled their planned appearances to protest the Trumpian move. [ii]
To maintain one’s tax-exempt publicly beneficial good standing, America’s charitable organizations are strictly prohibited from engaging in partisan electoral activities. Just as we have long had the separation of church and state as granted to us by our founding fathers, so have we long expected separating non-profit initiatives from obvious electoral endeavors.
[i] Graeme Massie, “Trump takeover sees Kennedy Center suffer ticket sale collapse, says report,” The Independent, February 23, 2025, found at: https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-kennedy-center-ticket-sales-b2703156.html
[ii] Graeme Massie, “Trump takeover sees Kennedy Center suffer ticket sale collapse, says report,” The Independent, February 23, 2025, found at: https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-kennedy-center-ticket-sales-b2703156.html
