Not content with completing his takeover of the Kennedy Center by slapping his own name on the building, President Donald Trump has revealed the next phase of his current redesign obsession.
The 79-year-old president hinted on Truth Social that the ’60s modernist building in Washington, D.C., would be getting the Mar-a-Lago special with a gold and marble interior refit, starting, of course, with the theater’s armrests.
“Potential Marble armrests for the seating at The Trump Kennedy Center. Unlike anything ever done or seen before!” Trump announced on Friday evening.
Accompanying images show the hard-stone armrest examples that Trump apparently wants to install in the chairs of the center’s three main theaters.
It’s just the latest round in the president’s ongoing commandeering of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, a “living memorial” to the slain 35th president.
In February, Trump took issue with the center’s programming of LGBTQ performances and fired its board members. So he installed his own board, appointed himself chair, and promised to exert his influence over the half-century-old cultural center’s offerings.
Swaths of artists, organizations, and concerts have since abandoned the iconic venue. Staff has been cut, and the center is now being described as a “swamp for cronyism and self-dealing.”
The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts has added President Donald J. Trump’s name to the building on December 19, 2025 in Washington, D.C. The Washington Post/Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post via Getty Images
At Trump’s request, Congress has secured $250 million in funding for renovations to the building, which first opened in 1971.
The white-marble makeover that the center is likely to undergo is typical of the Trump touch, which he has liberally applied to the White House since his return to power in January.
The Oval Office has been daubed in white marble and gold, while the 1940s Art Deco Lincoln Bathroom suffered a similar fate. The Rose Garden was also stripped of its greenery and reanimated with a Mar-a-Lago-style marble patio and striped umbrellas.
The levelling of the East Wing to create an oversized ballroom that will dwarf the White House itself is ongoing.
All of this, of course, has been taking place while Republicans cut funding to social services.
Trump’s interior design taste, exemplified in his Palm Beach, Florida, home, is thought to draw inspiration from the European Baroque style—an aesthetic choice long beloved by dictators and strongmen the world over.
The social media gauging of public opinion over the armrests is the second time this week that Trump has looked to his followers for feedback. On Tuesday, just ahead of the CBS broadcast of his night as host of the Kennedy Center Honors, Trump inquired whether he should give up his day job to try his hand instead as a full-time master of ceremonies.
A few weeks prior, Trump similarly suggested that if he couldn’t outperform comedian Jimmy Kimmel as host of the Kennedy Center Honors awards, then he shouldn’t be president.
Early reports indicate that the Trump-hosted broadcast brought in the ceremony’s lowest-ever TV ratings.
Many members of the Kennedy family are up in arms about the assault on their family legacy, with a number of the influential clan speaking out against the changes.
“It makes my blood boil. It’s so ridiculous, so petty, so small-minded,” Maria Shriver, John F. Kennedy’s niece, wrote in response to the renaming suggestion in July.
“Can we not see what is happening here? C’mon, my fellow Americans! Wake up!” she wrote in reaction to the actual renaming last week.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
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