Hundreds of protesters linked hands around the Kennedy Center on Friday night, days after its Trump-appointed board voted to close the building and as the president again tied his help saving it to getting credit for the effort.
CNN reported that the Kennedy Center laid off about a dozen employees Friday, cutting further into what the network described as an already skeleton staff.
The rally was organized by Hands Off the Arts, which said it was protesting the president's "defacing of JFK's memorial," the removal and censorship of art, and his threat to demolish the center if he cannot remake it in his image.
CNN's Sunlen Serfaty, reporting from outside the building, described a crowd of many hundreds on a Friday night, heavy with musicians and others from the arts community. She said protesters carried signs telling Trump he is no JFK, and one suggesting Mar-a-Lago be demolished instead.
Serfaty spoke with former employees among the crowd. One said she had not received her final paycheck or back pay after being laid off. Another, who said she was alive when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, went on to work the ticket counter at the center and was let go after 15 years, told the building was closing and changing.
Tarps cover the facade and security guards began wearing hard hats this week, Serfaty reported. The center said it is closed for the next week, describing the shutdown as temporary and tied to a first round of renovations.
Asked Friday about reports he had looked at plans to demolish the building, Trump fixated on how he should be credited.
"I think the Trump administration should be recognized as having saved the Kennedy Center, because nobody else can do it," he said.
The protest follows a chaotic week.
The board voted Tuesday to close the venue, citing hazardous conditions and urgent renovation needs, an hour after U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper again blocked the building from carrying Trump's name. Trump announced on Truth Social that it would shut "immediately," despite a court order barring the closure.
Rep. Joyce Beatty, who sits on the board and brought the suit that led to Cooper's ruling, filed an emergency motion. Cooper ordered Trump and the board to respond by Thursday morning, as forklifts were seen striking the building and crews moved to encircle it with fencing. Trump's lawyers responded minutes before the deadline, arguing 2,500-pound concrete slabs ringing the building pose an active falling hazard.
Trump reportedly screamed at Beatty during a board call before the vote, telling her she had "never built anything" in her life after she accused him of driving the center into debt.
Writing Friday, Pulitzer-winning critic Robin Givhan said the campaign against the building had produced a level of anger that surprised her, arguing nothing had so thoroughly highlighted Trump's "indefatigable petulance" because what he wants is his name on the building.