President Donald Trump has been ordered by a federal court to yank his name off the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, losing his last-ditch appeal, and giving him no choice but to acquiesce.
The moment is symbolic, Brookings Institution senior fellow Elaine Kamarck told MS NOW's Antonia Hylton on Friday — and she even compared it to one of the most infamous moments at the end of the Saddam Hussein dictatorship in Iraq.
"So Elaine, do you agree ... is this less about the Kennedy Center and more of a proxy battle having to do with presidential powers?" asked Hylton.
Kamarck concurred, giving praise to Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-OH), who sits on the Kennedy Center board and whose lawsuit was responsible for the ruling.
"The question is, will this be one of those turning points in history that we remember, like the statue of Saddam Hussein being pulled down during the Iraq War?" Kamarck continued. "Is this going to be sort of the beginning of of the end of Trumpism? He's in the worst point he's ever been in in his presidency, in popularity."
All of this, she noted, comes at a moment when Trump is "fighting on every corner against the law" and desperately trying to reassert control of the war in Iran he started earlier this year. "He's in trouble."
The Kennedy Center controversy may ultimately be a "small item in the scheme of things," she added, but "I wouldn't be surprised if, you know, millions of people watch this and are secretly or overtly applauding to see his name coming down, because we're coming to the end of a Trump era. And I think this will symbolize that."