This magical 'fix' will plunge the Kennedy Center into even darker days

The Kennedy Center is reportedlyfacing bankruptcy within weeks. But that could all magically disappear with one action, according to Trump's lackeys on the board — put his name back on the building.

Yep, it’s that easy, apparently.

According to documents obtained by The New York Times and The Washington Post, a draft resolution circulated to the Kennedy Center's board of trustees ahead of a special meeting scheduled for today warns the venerable performing arts center could soon be unable to make payroll or pay its routine maintenance contracts.

Gee, I wonder how that happened? Let me think on that for a minute. Anyway, Trump, the documents say, has offered to help raise the money needed to keep the place afloat. Bless his heart.

But wait! Hold on! The only way he helps, or what the trustees say is "appropriate recognition of his role,” is if his name goes back up on the building. If not, then the building goes under.

One Trumper board member, Al Baldasaro, laughingly told the Times that when Trump tells people to donate, people donate. That is, of course, again, if his name is on the building. If not, then Trump won’t ask people to donate.

OK, so let me get this straight. How did this cash shortage befall the Kennedy Center? Because Trump hijacked it, and since his involvement, he’s beaten it into the ground. No one has been going there, and no one has been donating since Trump took it over and put his name on the building. The building went dark as soon as it saw Trump’s epic darkness.

So, if his name goes back up on the building, like it was before during those dark days, how will things change? Well, obviously things won’t change. In fact, they’ll get worse, and history proves that.

Three of Donald Trump's four corporate bankruptcies involved properties that had his name plastered directly on them. The Trump Taj Mahal filed for bankruptcy in 1991, buried under more than a billion dollars in junk-bond debt carrying a brutal 14 percent interest rate.

Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, renamed for him within months of opening in 1984, went down as part of the sprawling 2004 Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts bankruptcy and again in the 2009 Trump Entertainment Resorts collapse, before the building was eventually reduced to rubble by dynamite in 2021.

Therefore, putting Trump's name on a building suggests you've started a countdown clock to bankruptcy, and not a fundraising campaign.

Then there's the fourth case, and it's the one that should really worry anyone who cares about the Kennedy Center, because it shows the damage doesn't even require his name on the marquee.

The iconic Plaza Hotel in New York never became "Trump Plaza." He never renamed it. He just bought it in 1988 for roughly $400 million, called it "the ultimate work of art," compared it to the Mona Lisa, and took ownership of its identity in every way that mattered.

Before Trump made it look trashy, the Plaza was one of the great institutions of American life: the setting of the Eloise books, the hotel in The Great Gatsby, the place the Beatles stayed on their first trip to America. And Truman Capote’s unforgettable Black & White Ball in 1968.

It ran a modest profit for about two years under Trump. Then the enormous debt he'd taken on to buy it caught up with the balance sheet, ballooning past half a billion dollars, and by 1992 he'd lost the hotel to bankruptcy.

A beloved cultural landmark, almost ruined by Donald Trump.

The blinded-by-the-Trump-phony-glitz board of the Kennedy Center fails to take all this vaunted and blotted history into consideration. Further, the Kennedy Center board doesn't get to pick between the Taj Mahal outcome and the Plaza Hotel outcome, because put Trump in the mix or on the marquee, and it’ll find its way into bankruptcy court.

The Kennedy Center opened in 1971 as a living memorial to John F. Kennedy and built one of the great stages in American cultural life, the place that has handed out Kennedy Center Honors to the likes of Aretha Franklin, Ella Fitzgerald, Bruce Springsteen, Meryl Streep, Paul McCartney, and Al Pacino.

Trump took over its board in February 2025 and installed himself as chairman, and almost immediately, the backlash was swift and the exodus immediate. Issa Rae canceled a sold-out show. Shonda Rhimes resigned from the board. Ben Folds quit as the National Symphony Orchestra's artistic adviser.

And the dominoes kept falling. Hamilton pulled its planned run. A college theater festival that had partnered with the Center for nearly 60 years walked away entirely. Shows that used to sell out started struggling to fill seats. Part of the ceiling literally fell in.

Now, do you see this just didn’t happen? Donald Trump became involved, and it all fell apart. And that’s his pattern. He breaks it, claims he can fix it, but the damage has already been done. He can never fix what he broke.

But we’re supposed to believe that if his name goes back up on the building, all will be OK? His almost criminal — strike that, not almost, blatantly criminal — takeover has already cost the Kennedy Center so much, and putting his name back on it will sink it for sure.

Somewhere, that radiant smile of JFK is giving way to tears of hurt and anger.

The Kennedy Center's board isn't voting this week on whether to avoid bankruptcy or survive it. Based on the only track record anyone with half a brain has to go on, they're voting on which version of the same nightmarish ending they'd prefer.