Trump’s Kennedy Center shutdown exposes another bad bet, Atlantic warns

President Donald Trump’s decision to shutter the Kennedy Center for two years amounts to a quiet admission of failure driven by a familiar error, an Atlantic writer argues. After taking control of the iconic arts institution despite never attending a performance there, Trump insisted his personal judgment would revive it, only to trigger staff resignations, artist withdrawals, plummeting ticket sales, and programming turmoil. His latest claim that the closure is needed for revitalization directly contradicts months of public boasts that the building was already repaired and thriving, leaving the justification largely unverifiable. The episode, David A. Graham writes, reflects Trump’s broader governing pattern: overconfidence, disregard for expertise, and repeated miscalculations about public support that leave high-profile projects collapsing under their own weight.

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