Staffers at the Kennedy Center are quietly mocking Donald Trump over a MAGA makeover that’s left the building looking like the flag of a completely different country.
As part of his administration’s overhaul of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Washington Post reported Sunday the building’s exterior is often now “lit up in red, white and blue (a move that, many staffers joke, makes the building look like the flag of France, not America).”
It’s a color palette also shared by the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Croatia, Thailand and—perhaps most notably, given Trump’s decidedly cozy relationship with its dictatorial leader—Russia.
The MAGA leader moved to take control of the Kennedy Center almost immediately after starting his second term, as part of a wider campaign to rid the center of a perceived “woke” bias.
He’s since installed himself as the new chair of the board, with long-time ally Richard Grenell as president, First Lady Melania Trump as honorary chair, and a host of other loyalists, like Attorney General Pam Bondi and Fox News hosts Laura Ingraham and Maria Bartiromo, as members.
Along with the unfortunate new outside lighting arrangement, the president has further launched a $257 million renovation of the center, with portraits of the first and second couples (Donald and Melania Trump; Vice President JD Vance and Usha Vance) hanging in the Hall of Nations.
Perhaps the most notable, and controversial, shift under the second MAGA administration has been to the center’s programming, with what the WaPo describes as a significant uptick in right-leaning and Christian-oriented events since January, along with fees being reduced or outright waived for organizations deemed to align with the president’s agenda.
On Friday, this included a ceremony in which FIFA President Gianni Infantino awarded Trump the soccer organization’s inaugural Peace Prize.
That honor did not, in fact, exist until Trump was snubbed for the Nobel Peace Prize earlier in October, following a concerted and highly public campaign to secure himself perhaps the most coveted award on the planet.
FIFA is understood to have used the Kennedy Center, where it will host the 2026 World Cup Draw later this month, free of charge.
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