‘trumpified’ kennedy center is for all americans — and the elites are raging

Opinion‘Trumpified’ Kennedy Center is for ALL Americans — and the elites are ragingBy Libby EmmonsPublishedMay 30, 2025, 5:15 p.m. EThe Kennedy Center is seen Aug. 13, 2019, in Washington.AP

Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File

The elitist artsy set is up in arms about President Donald Trump’s brash takeover of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

The “Trumpified” Washington, DC institution “should get blown up,” Broadway legend Patti LuPone declared this week.

Performers claim to fear “Trump’s politics and his meddling with the arts,” The Washington Post reported — but what they really hate is that the new attitude at the capital’s premiere

performance center opens it up to regular Americans.

It’s about time the Kennedy Center was politically neutralized, welcoming audiences across the ideological spectrum.

Certainly, the insiders should know that the arts have been failing to capture the imagination of the American public — and shows have been failing to recoup their costs — in part because

their leftist partisanship has been a turn-off to at least half their potential audience. 

But the artists who’ve monopolized the Kennedy Center’s stages for years are howling.

Robert DeNiro, at the Cannes Film Festival, complained about the center’s “philistine” coup in progress. 

Lin-Manuel Miranda yanked his musical “Hamilton” from a scheduled run on its stages. 

Eleven of the 12 principal cast members in “Les Misérables” say they’ll go on strike rather than perform for Trump during their June 11 performance.

LuPone, DeNiro, Miranda and the boycotting “Les Mis” actors are clearly not up on their Hamlet.

“The play’s the thing / Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king,” the prince of Denmark famously said — and these luminaries should know their Shakespeare.

Refusing to engage now that the Kennedy Center’s leadership opposes their leftist politics only exposes their own ignorance, elitism and superiority complexes. 

If they really wanted to effect change in the man they so despise, the best thing they could do is perform for him — as Hamlet wisely advised.

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No, the truth is they simply think their hearts and their arts are too pure for the likes of Trump and his supporters.

They’re mad that the Kennedy Center’s hallowed halls aren’t just for them and their ethos anymore — that Americans who like a bit of circus with their bread no longer have to feel excluded.

Trump’s leadership change, while heavy-handed, shunts liberal activism back into the wings where it belongs.

Sure, anyone could walk up and buy a ticket, but when it came to the arts in America, we all know full well who has been on the VIP list and who was meant to crouch among the groundlings.

Despite the hand-wringing, Trump’s first Kennedy Center season will see the same number of Broadway touring shows as in years past — including big New York hits like “Spamalot,” “Chicago,”

“Back to the Future,” “Mrs. Doubtfire,” “The Outsiders,” and “Moulin Rouge!”.

But two of them are non-union shows — a cost-cutting move that also opens the door for actors and stage techs who haven’t had the chance to gain a coveted spot in the Actors Equity Union

(it’s not easy to get one). 

“We want more options, not fewer,” said Kennedy Center president Ric Grenell, who notes the change in leadership also means no more drag story hours for kids.

The Kennedy Center will play a major role next year in the celebration of America’s 250th birthday, too, and the NEA granting requirements for that momentous occasion have already changed:

They now ask artists to submit projects celebrating America, not tearing her down.

Anti-Trump artists liked having all of American theater for themselves.

They enjoyed shutting out colleagues who didn’t agree with them politically, and reveled in making traditionalist audience members feel uncomfortable.

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Those performers, writers and producers thought it was their job to “educate” audiences with leftist politics — but it isn’t, and it never was.

It’s their job to entertain and tell honest stories in beautiful forms. 

When regional theater began in the 1950s with funding from the Ford Foundation, the goal was to take professional shows out to the rest of the country, to bring them the Broadway experience

— not to force-feed them political diatribes.

That’s what Trump intends to do: Bring a return to fun to the American stage, with transportive, transformative works that allow audiences to let go of day-to-day troubles and experience the

wonder of theater. 

And what none of these complainers seem to realize is this: If their stages hadn’t been occupied by leftist activism that shut out regular Americans, there’d be no cause for the correction

they’re seeing now.

Libby Emmons is the editor-in-chief at the Post Millennial.

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