Alarm as Trump caught studying 'Kennedy Center DEM-' plans: 'He must be stopped'
U.S. President Donald Trump walks after disembarking Marine One following a visit to North Carolina, at the Ellipse near the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., September 16, 2026. REUTERS/Aaron Schwartz

President Donald Trump was photographed aboard Air Force One looking at a poster board that read "Kennedy Center DEM-."

On Wednesday night, Trump was heading back from a rally for GOP candidate Michael Whatley when AFP photographer Brendan Smialowski snapped a picture through one of the Air Force One windows that caught him studying a large placard.

Commentators pointed out that the top of the poster clearly read "Kennedy Center" and that the bottom seemed to be some kind of designs or blueprints, but what alarmed them was that the sign also seemed to have the letters "DEM" spelling out an unfinished word next to "Kennedy Center."

"As someone pointed out to me, it looks like the placard could read 'Kennedy Center DEMOLITION,'" journalist Aaron Rupar noted in a post on X.

"Kennedy Center Demolition?" asked foreign policy reporter Laura Rozen. "That is what he is focused on while gas prices rising, interest rate rising, he can't get a deal with Canada much less Iran."

She noted in another post, "This is the politically weak, damaged ego Xi will be meeting with a week from today," referring to the upcoming visit of Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

"Looks like backhoes. Guessing it says 'Kennedy Center DEMOLITION,'" agreed disinformation expert and Kash Patel foe Jim Stewartson. "He is a criminal saboteur. He must be stopped."

"If the next letter on that posterboard is an 'O,' the word would likely be 'demolition,'" political journalist Jonathan Nicholson similarly pointed out. "And you put that together with Trump's 'never ask permission, maybe forgiveness' with what was seen earlier in the day and..."

Nicholson was referring to the news, which Ben Meiselas from MeidasTouch reported, that a legal observer declared in a court document, under penalty of perjury, that she witnessed a forklift repeatedly crashing into the pillars of the Kennedy Center on Wednesday, hours before Trump was seen with the ominous poster board.