It wasn’t enough to mess with the programming, install himself as chair, and stick his name above JFK’s on the façade. The president has abruptly announced that he’s closing (the Donald J. Trump and) the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for a major renovation, no doubt to forestall the embarrassment that would accompany a further cascade of the cancellations, boycotts, and empty seats the center already faces. He says the project will take two years, to begin right after the national 250th-birthday celebration this July, which could mean it’ll be finished at just about the end of his term. Trump surely thinks he’ll cut the ribbon at the reopening, and God help the site manager who has to tell him about some construction delay that will push the event into the next president’s term. That is, if he obeys the law and leaves the job in 2028, or earlier through natural causes.
That timeline assumes this “renovation” will actually happen. Reports are that Trump and his filthy little Igor, Richard Grenell, haven’t so much as gotten a contractor’s estimate yet, and two years is hardly enough time to rehab a large and complex building. Trump has said it’ll cost $200 million, which also sounds suspiciously modest. Then again, how much he actually intends to do is vague. Some infrastructure work is genuinely needed there, HVAC repairs and the like, and Congress allocated money for that some time ago. Otherwise, CBS News has reported that much of the building may actually remain intact, but Trump (as is his custom, and perhaps riffing off the cuff) made the project sound extensive and transformative. “I’ll be using the steel … We’re using some of the marble, and some of the marble comes down.” All of this hints that he’s going to fix the roof and some wear and tear and call it a total rehab, which buttresses the idea that this project is all a front to avoid more bad publicity. If we are lucky — and we need some luck these days — we’ll come out with a better building that hasn’t been encrusted with midprice-hotel signage. Unlikely, I know.
