President Donald Trump attempted to wash his hands of the “massive deficit” plaguing the storied cultural institution that he has attempted to rename after himself.
Trump, 79, passed the blame for the plummeting sales at the Kennedy Center.
“People don’t realize that The Trump Kennedy Center suffered massive deficits for many years and, like everything else, I merely came in to save it and, if possible, make it far better than ever before!” he wrote in a Truth Social post on Monday.
The once-venerated arts institution has struggled to sell tickets since Trump remade it in his image in February.
In October, nearly nine months after the Trump takeover, a Washington Post analysis of ticketing data found that sales for the three largest performance venues at the Kennedy Center—the Opera House, the Concert Hall, and the Eisenhower Theater—were the worst they had been in three years.
Data from Sept. 3 to Oct. 19 last year showed that only 57 percent of tickets had been sold for the typical production, including “comps” or tickets given away to staff or the press, compared to 93 percent in fall 2024 and 80 percent in fall 2023, according to the outlet.
That’s thanks in large part to renowned artists and performance groups pulling out of scheduled performances—many in protest of the Kennedy Center’s MAGAfication. This month alone, the center was hit with a slew of cancellations.
Grammy-winning soprano Renée Fleming backed out last week due to what the center described as a “scheduling conflict.” The Martha Graham Dance Company, the oldest such group in the U.S., also canceled its April show without providing an explanation. The Washington National Opera similarly ended its five-decade residency at the Kennedy Center earlier this month.
But Trump’s claim that the Kennedy Center has “suffered massive deficits for many years” has been disputed by former staffers at the institution.
Donna Arduin, the Kennedy Center’s new chief financial officer, claimed in an email to staff in March that the organization was struggling with a $100 million deficit. But staffers told the Post that the figure was inaccurate.
“The statement that we have an operating deficit of over $100 million is inaccurate,” a staffer with direct knowledge of the center’s finances told the outlet. “Our audited FY23 financial statements, which are publicly available via ProPublica, show that this figure excludes essential nonprofit revenue streams such as contributions, grants, and endowment support.”
The staffer added: “Nonprofit organizations are designed to rely on philanthropic and institutional support in order to fulfill their mission. Using an ‘earned revenue minus expenses’ framework oversimplifies the picture and applies a for-profit lens that doesn’t reflect how nonprofit business models work.”
In December, the board Trump appointed announced it would rename the venue as the Trump-Kennedy Center despite needing congressional approval to do so.
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