President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Kennedy Center personally berated a musician who questioned his policies.
Director Ric Grenell sent a series of angry emails to the woman, guitarist Yasmin Williams, questioning her own judgement and motives.
The back-and-forth began when Williams sent a message to Grenell, a MAGA devotee who was named as director of the Kennedy Center after the president stripped its board and installed his own loyalists, to ask about his new anti-DEI mandate.
“I’ve read a lot of commentary from musician friends and former patrons of the Kennedy Center who are concerned about the Center’s rollback of DEI initiatives, removal of the Social Impact Team, the cancellation of certain shows (Finn and the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington specifically), and eliminating board members,” Williams wrote to Grenell via email. “My two questions are: does the President actually care about artists cancelling shows at the Kennedy Center? What, if anything, has changed about the Kennedy Center regarding hiring practices, performance booking, and staffing?”
When Trump staged his takeover of the center and named Grenell—an openly gay man—as its interim head in February, he pledged to not allow drag shows or “anti-American propaganda.”
Despite a flood of recent criticism for the controversial moves, Williams’ email in particular apparently struck a nerve in Grenell.
“Let me ask you this question, would you play for Republicans or would you boycott if Republicans came to your show,” he wrote back, signed with a simple “ric”.
Williams then countered his email, claiming that she has performed hundreds of shows and Republicans were probably in the audience.
After going back-and-forth for multiple emails, Grenell finally answered the performer’s question, complaining about how broke the center is and how “woke” the programs are.
“I cut the DEI bullshit because we can’t afford to pay people for fringe and niche programming that the public won’t support,” he wrote. “Yes, I cut the people making over $500k a year because we are in debt.”
In another email, he told her to not “be a victim now,” and that she accused him of being “intolerant.”
In an interview with CNN, the musician revealed that she was shocked by his responses, thinking it was fake at first.
Muscian Yamin Williams photographed in her home in Alexandria, Virginia on January 22, 2025.
(Photo by Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
The Washington Post/The Washington Post via Getty Im
“I thought it was just like, is this ChatGPT? Like, what is this,” she said. “It was just bizarre.”
The Kennedy Center has not been the only cultural institution under Trump’s ire. The president has also targeted the Smithsonian Institution as he tried to force the museums to remove what he has deemed as “improper ideology.”
“I hope posting this email thread illuminates the terrible folks who are now leading the Kennedy Center,” Williams wrote to Instagram this week. “I’ve had so many amazing career and life highlights at the Kennedy Center and I hate to think that the establishment could be run down permanently by this man.”
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