President Donald Trump wasn’t joking when he welcomed guests to the live “Trump-Kennedy Center Honors” on Dec. 7, a comment that was cut in the televised version Dec. 23. Shortly after the original event, the president’s hand-picked board voted to rename the center. Guess who got top billing?

Signage was erected on the facade the day after the vote to read: The Donald J. Trump and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.

To understand how the Kennedy Center came to be bullied into submission, let’s recap Trump’s relationship with it.

During his first term, several honorees suggested they would boycott the 2017 White House reception after Trump defended white supremacist marches in Charlottesville, Virginia. In response, the Trumps skipped the honors all four years to avoid “political distraction.”

During his second term, he roared back with revenge. He fired the center’s top leadership; dismantled its bipartisan board and anointed a new one of loyalists; named a former envoy as president; and installed himself as chairman.

Over 100 staff members have been fired or resigned, departments dismantled and programming curtailed. As a result, ticket sales plummeted, and top touring acts withdrew.

Trump personally oversaw the honors, including replacing the iconic medallions, trimmed with a rainbow ribbon for 47 years, with a solid blue one. He chose the honorees instead of a selection process involving artists, board members and center officials. He also hosted the 48th annual Kennedy Center Honors ceremony — the first president to do so.

He claimed he didn’t have much time to prepare. Certainly he has been busy deflecting the fallout over Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes and building a $300 million ballroom where the East Wing once stood. He found congressional money for a $257 million renovation for the Kennedy Center, while ending arts funding across the nation.

Stars strolling the red carpet weren’t A-listers of years past. Instead, the grand entrance was strewn with Fox News personalities, members of his administration and others who should have had name tags to be recognized.

The “unbelievable talent” for the 2025 honors were George Strait, Kiss, Sylvester Stallone, Gloria Gaynor and Michael Crawford.

Departing from tradition, there was no nominee from the fine arts — no dancers, composers, classical musicians or opera stars.

Nashville luminaries came, but Hollywood stayed home.

Country stars Miranda Lambert, Vince Gill and Brooks & Dunn saluted Strait. Presenters for the other nominees were Kurt Russell for Stallone, Kelsey Grammer for Crawford, Elle King for Gaynor and Garth Brooks for Kiss.

The show was bloated, as usual, but without tour de force performances such as when Aretha Franklin sang “A Natural Woman” for Carole King or Heart performed Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven.” There were no presenters for the mourned Rob Reiner, who had honored both Norman Lear and Billy Crystal, and whose death the president spitefully said resulted from the director’s anti-Trump activism.

Trump, however, was everywhere: opening the show with his customary ineloquence and introducing the segments by prerecorded remarks. He reappeared on stage before Cheap Trick’s forgettable finale of “Rock and Roll All Nite.”

The event was co-opted as a starring vehicle for the president with acolytes as co-stars. And while Trump had predicted his hosting would be the highest-rated honors ever done, it was the lowest, according to Nielsen’s preliminary data.

Once a behemoth of culture and a refuge from politics, the center now endorses a narrow vision of art and espouses a MAGA agenda.

The Kennedy Center has never been a performing arts venue only. Founded in 1971, it serves as a living memorial to a slain president who supported the arts. Programming reflected the country’s diversity and was dedicated to bringing culture to all Americans.

Until now. Since the takeover, it has sponsored a NewsNation Town Hall, U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum, a prayer vigil for right-wing activist Charlie Kirk and the World Cup draw. It will also host the premiere of “Melania,” a documentary about the first lady.

Trump stamping his name on buildings is not new. But the proliferation of his branding on government entities shows a brazen vigor at self-promotion. Commemorative Trump coins are planned for the 250th anniversary of Declaration of Independence. The Institute of Peace was renamed the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace, ironic given lethal — and probably illegal — strikes in the Caribbean, as well as attacks in Syria and threats to take over Greenland. Up next are Trump-class battleships.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Joyce Beatty is suing Trump, and U.S. Rep. April McClain Delaney is introducing legislation to prohibit the name change. Trump, however, is impervious to legal restraints.

The Kennedy family and arts groups such as Hands off the Arts, American Guild of Musical Artists and Actors’ Equity Association condemn the renaming.

“Adding your name to a memorial already named in honor of a great man doesn’t make you a great man,” said Maria Shriver, a Kennedy niece.

Another niece, Kerry Kennedy, looks ahead. “Three years and one month from today, I’m going to grab a pickax and pull those letters off that building, but I’m going to need help holding the ladder. Are you in?”

Meanwhile, Trump has “joked” about giving himself an honors award. Given recent history, it’s probably not a joke — just another stake in the heart of the once-great national arts center.

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Christine Ledbetter is a former senior arts editor at The Washington Post who lives in Illinois, where she writes about culture and politics.

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