In an interview with Slate's Mary Harris, the New Yorker's Katy Waldman stated that nothing is going well at John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts since Donald Trump took over the venerable Washington D.C. institution.
Following up on earlier reports that crowd-pleasing –– and ticket-selling – performances like the musical "Hamilton" have bailed on appearing due to the president's meddling, Waldman bluntly claimed, "Everything is worse."
Singling out Richard Grenell who Trump put in place to oversee his vision of what the Kennedy Center should be, Waldman noted a purge of employees that followed and explained, " think the ways in which he has fired people or laid people off have been somewhat heartless. And also, there’s been a lot of slippery explanations," while describing his manner of dealing with people as " Seed any ground, come in hot, attack, attack, attack."
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Asked about disputed reports coming the Trump administration that the arts center has been a money loser, she offered, "From what I could tell, it was flourishing. It had money, and it was doing what it was supposed to be doing pre-Trump. That doesn’t necessarily mean that it was always making more money than it spent on its programming. But because its sources of revenue were not just box office, but were also gifts and donations, it was still overall in the black."
With that in. mind, she added that financial difficulties are in the foreseeable future as ticket sales have collapsed.
"That’s a whole different part of the picture, which is no matter how well or badly the center was doing before Trump, the Trump anti-Midas touch is in operation here, and now everything is worse," she explained before adding, "Not only are ticket sales down, but donations have been paused, artists are pulling out. All of the spigots for money have slowed or have been turned off."
You can read the Slate interview here.
