Artists might cancel shows, donors withdraw and audiences flee. It all plays into the hands of his authoritarian project<\/p>\n
In Washington, Donald Trump\u2019s takeover of the Kennedy Center <\/a>\u2013 the US\u2019s imposing national centre for the performing arts \u2013 presents a bizarre, unnerving and, at times, bleakly comical spectacle. Last month, he announced himself its new chair, replaced 13 board members, and inserted a new interim president<\/a>, foreign policy adviser Richard Grenell. On Monday this week, the president\u2019s motorcade disgorged him at the building<\/a> \u2013 which contains an opera house, theatre, concert hall and a plethora of smaller venues off its towering, chandelier-hung foyers. By this point, his and Melania Trump\u2019s portraits, alongside those of vice-president JD Vance and his wife Usha, had been screwed to the wall beside the concert hall stage door.<\/p>\n Trump and his new trustees \u2013 who include Usha Vance and Fox presenter Laura Ingraham<\/a> \u2013 then discussed changes to the Kennedy Center Honors<\/a>, founded in the 1970s to recognise the greatest figures in American cultural life. Trump called previous honorees, who have ranged from Fred Astaire to Francis Ford Coppola, \u201cradical left lunatics<\/a>\u201d. Men such as singer Andrea Bocelli, who has performed<\/a> at Mar-a-Lago, and Sylvester Stallone, who recently called Trump<\/a> a \u201csecond George Washington\u201d, were floated for future honours. With the truculence of a slighted schoolboy, Trump opined that he had never much cared for Hamilton<\/a> \u2013 this, after the news that the musical has withdrawn<\/a> from a 2026 run at the centre. He also complained about an infestation of mice. All this, the day before he was due to speak to Russian president Vladimir Putin to haggle over<\/a> Ukraine\u2019s future. It is enough to give you a political-cultural attack of the bends.<\/p>\n Charlotte Higgins is the Guardian\u2019s chief culture writer<\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Artists might cancel shows, donors withdraw and audiences flee. It all plays into the hands of his authoritarian project In Washington, Donald Trump\u2019s takeover of the Kennedy Center \u2013 the US\u2019s imposing national centre for the performing arts \u2013 presents a bizarre, unnerving and, at times, bleakly comical spectacle. Last month, he announced himself its … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36531\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}