Donald Trump’s niece says she knows what’s really driving the president’s Kennedy Center tantrum that is threatening the building’s entire existence.
The 80-year-old president and his MAGA devotees have been throwing a fit over the Washington, D.C. arts venue since he was blocked from slapping his name on the center and shutting down the building for renovations.
In a new document, the center’s Trump-appointed leaders claim that the institution is on the verge of bankruptcy and that slapping the president’s name on the building may be its only hope for averting “certain fiscal collapse,” according to The Washington Post.
ALEX WROBLEWSKI/Alex Wroblewski, Getty Images
Meanwhile, Justice Department attorneys warned in a court filing last month that the center may have to be demolished altogether if Trump’s plan to close the center for two years for renovations is blocked.
The DOJ attorneys called the 55-year-old building—conceived as a living memorial to slain President John F. Kennedy—“structurally unsound, fundamentally unsafe, and embarrassing to the Nation’s Capital.”
On Monday, Mary Trump, the daughter of the president’s late brother Fred, blasted the claims from Trump’s allies about the center as “bulls–t” in a video on X.
“The Trump regime is actually threatening to level the Kennedy Center, raise it to the ground, unless they can go ahead with closing it for two years to do renovations, which, before now, nobody thought were needed,” Mary said.
She scoffed at the board’s claim in the court filing that Trump’s “efforts and prestige provide the sole hope for the Center’s financial survival, and structural renewal.”
“The board, which is just a bunch of hand-picked sycophants, actually said this without any sense of shame or self-awareness,” she said. “Yes, only Donald Trump, only Donald Trump can save the Kennedy Center from itself—the man who just so deeply loves and honors the arts; Bulls–t.”
Mary, 61, argued that in reality, her uncle’s hostage-taking campaign over the center boils down to one thing: his bruised ego.
“He’s still upset because he had to take his stupid name off the side of the building, and he’s going to punish the rest of us simply because he can’t get his way. That’s what this is about,” she said. “Period. End of story.”
The president’s niece called on the public to mobilize to save the center.
“If the bulldozers start rolling up to the Kennedy Center to tear it down, we must… drop everything, go to Washington, D.C., form a human chain, bring a picnic, and stay there and wait them out so these monsters can’t destroy one more thing America loves,” she said.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
