Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Oh.) detailed the “tantrum” Donald Trump threw after his latest legal setback in their war over the Kennedy Center.
The congresswoman from Ohio appeared on MS NOW’s “The Weeknight” Tuesday evening, hours after a federal judge blocked the Trump-appointed Kennedy Center board’s latest attempt to add the president’s name to the institution.
“Well, we were in court right before we went into the board meeting,” Beatty, who sought emergency relief to prevent the shutdown and the name addition to the façade ahead of a special board meeting, said. “So they opened up the board meeting by informing the board that we had again, [in] Beatty v. Trump, Beatty had been victorious. And he went into a tantrum.”
As Beatty went on, she blasted the president’s reaction as “the most unprofessional thing that I’ve ever witnessed or been a part of it.” Per Beatty, Trump resorted to name calling, labeling her everything from an “obstructionist” to “dumb.”
“He said, ‘I think you’re incompetent.’ And I said, ‘I know you’re incompetent,’” she said. “And I looked to the chair … and I said, ‘Are we really going to do this? This is unprofessional.’ But I was not going to let him call me awful things.”
According to Beatty, Trump threatened that he planned to hold her responsible if something “fell out of the ceiling and killed someone.” To which she replied: “You’re already killing people. We’re at war. We also have people who are starving. You’re doing this.”
Beatty claimed Trump wanted “to talk about how great he was with developing” and that he was unfamiliar with her own legacy.
“So I reminded him that he had more bankruptcies than anybody in the room,” she said.
Watch Beatty’s full MS NOW interview below. A representative for the White House did not immediately respond to TheWrap’s request for comment.
Beatty’s MS NOW appearance came hours after the Kennedy Center board voted to immediately close the performing arts venue’s main building, which followed a federal judge’s decision to blocked their latest attempt to add Trump’s name to the venue named for former President John F. Kennedy.
The board, who were handpicked by Trump, approved the closure as part of a planned two-year, $250 million renovation. The board defended the closure by citing the institution’s worsening financial condition, as well as calling out the venue’s structural problems that allegedly threatened staff and public safety.
Beatty, who sued Trump and others over the Trump-Kennedy Center rebrand, pushed back by seeking an emergency relief to prevent the shutdown. And, earlier on Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper ruled that the board could not install an inscription crediting Trump with restoring and renovating the center or rename the surrounding grounds “President Donald J. Trump Plaza.” Additionally, it was reported that the closure could not take effect unless Cooper lifted the existing injunction.
Beatty’s attorneys then told the New York Times that the center’s abrupt closure Tuesday night was “a direct violation of the court’s order and courting contempt.”
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