Donald Trump’s Kennedy Center chief has furiously denied a report that board meetings at the D.C. arts venue now resemble Cabinet-style praise sessions for the president.
Trump, 79, took over as chair of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts board this year and installed loyalist Ric Grenell, 59, as interim president after ousting longtime boss Deborah Rutter. Trump has also hinted at the possibility of renaming the venue after himself.
But a CNN article published on Sunday has given a glimpse behind the curtain about what goes on during Kennedy Center board meetings attended by Trump.
CNN White House reporter Betsy Klein quotes one attendee as saying that they “now mirror Trump Cabinet meetings, with members going around the room to ‘talk about how great and visionary the president is and how he has so much class and taste.’”
The outlet’s chief media analyst, Brian Stelter, honed in on that passage, quoting it in a post on X. Grenell hit back hours later, posting: “This isn’t remotely true. We’ve never done this. Stelter is so comfortable making stuff up.”
In the replies, it was pointed out to Grenell that Stelter hadn’t even written the piece, with others saying his reaction suggested the story was “100% true.”
CNN also described how Trump has moved the next trustees’ gathering to Palm Beach, Florida, nearly 1,000 miles from the D.C. venue, and has pushed a “Vision for a Golden Age in Arts and Culture” at what he has called the “Trump Kennedy Center,” vowing it is “not going to be woke.”
The report detailed a sharp slide in ticket sales, including about 10,000 seats sold for this year’s Nutcracker across seven shows, compared with roughly 15,000 in earlier seasons, leaving the production about $500,000 short of its $1.5 million revenue target.
Internal data revealed by CNN also showed the center handing out about five times more complimentary tickets than in the previous four years.
Artists including Issa Rae, Renée Fleming, Shonda Rhimes, Ben Folds, and the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater have walked away from the center, according to CNN.
Former social impact chief Marc Bamuthi Joseph said leadership would ask if performers were trans and “make the conditions impossible for trans artists and gay artists to safely come,” adding that by driving away companies like Alvin Ailey, “You’re literally taking the culture out of the place.”
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, 70, has opened a Senate Environment and Public Works Committee inquiry into Grenell’s stewardship, alleging in a letter that the center is “being used as a slush fund and private club for Trump’s friends and political allies,” and citing documents that claim steeply discounted rentals for NewsNation and the American Conservative Union Foundation and “free and exclusive use” of the complex for FIFA—which handed Trump its inaugural peace prize at the World Cup draw at the center last week.
Kennedy Center spokeswoman Roma Daravi defended the finances, saying the Trump-led team had raised $131 million, and touting big corporate donations. A source told CNN that The Nutcracker alone could never cover the venue’s huge union and production costs.
It’s not the first time Grenell has lost his head on social media in the past few weeks. Last month, he had a furious reaction to Whitehouse’s corruption probe that saw him accuse critics of “Trump derangement syndrome” and boast of a “whopping $117 MILLION” in fundraising.
Then last week, he erupted on X after The New York Times published a story on plunging ticket sales.
The Daily Beast has contacted the Kennedy Center and the White House for comment.
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