The board at the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts on Tuesday voted to close the long-standing theater after running into financial issues and a dispute with President Donald Trump about putting his name on the venue, The Associated Press reported.
Trump and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick participated in the board meeting, an anonymous source told the AP. The individual was not authorized to discuss the private meeting, which was not explicitly listed on the president’s public schedule for Tuesday.
Trump has tangled with the Kennedy Center since the start of his second term, naming himself the leader of the board and trying to get his name on the building.
The board, who were handpicked by the president, voted to immediately close the performing arts center. The vote came just after a federal judge in Washington, D.C., rejected their latest attempt to get Trump’s name onto the building’s exterior.
Judge Christopher Cooper said adding Trump’s name to the building would violate a previous order that blocked the Kennedy Center board from renaming it after Trump. The judge said they can’t install memorials or change things at the Kennedy Center without approval from Congress.
The board has tried multiple times to get Trump’s name above former President John F. Kennedy’s on the building facade, with his name successfully being added for months until Cooper ruled in May they didn’t have the authority to make such additions.
Tuesday’s vote is the latest time the board has voted to close the center and complete two-year renovations, but Cooper has yet to allow the organization to shutter the building, despite the board saying they’re in a financially dire situation.
Trump on Tuesday morning shared online that the Kennedy Center was in a “virtual state of collapse” and argued renovations were necessary.
With the board running out of options for how to get Trump’s name attached to the building, they have floated ideas of adding inscriptions like “Renovation and endowment overseen by President Donald J. Trump and the Trump Kennedy Center Fund,” the AP reported.
Board members and Trump have consistently stated that the building is in need of renovations and could be unsafe to visitors in its current state; however, Cooper said that emergency repairs can be done under his order, nothing more.
The board also said that Trump is the only one who has the ability to fundraise successfully to get the money to both do the renovations and get the Kennedy Center above water and out of its “dire financial situation.”
“The Judge has made us keep it open even though there are no performances, and no people that would have the Courage to even go in,” Trump wrote online. “The Board of The Kennedy Center has strongly voted to save it, and they know I’m the only one who can do so, because I have the ability to raise the money, and the ability to construct — that few others have.”
“I also have the strength and power of the Presidency, which will be needed to do what must be done, and give it a strong shot at Greatness again!” he said.
Trump attempted to appeal to his supporters by saying the judge is allowing the building to fall apart and it is “destined to doom.” “Isn’t that too bad?” he wrote.
Cooper argued Tuesday that the government and Kennedy Center board haven’t offered up proof that future donations to the performing arts center hinge on Trump’s name being on the building or that should the president’s name not be on the center, it would cease to fulfill the artistic mission of the gathering and performing space created as a memorial for Kennedy after his assassination in 1963.
Trump, in a separate post, noted the board voted to close the building for safety reasons so it could begin renovations. He said it would close “immediately” but it can’t begin until the Washington, D.C., circuit court rules on the board-approved new name for the building.
“If the ruling is a negative one, which it should not be, and is not overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, the Reconstruction and Renovation of The Kennedy Center will not take place,” he said.
Trump said he has raised $17 million to put into the performing arts center to “keep it afloat” and attorneys from the Department of Justice will call for an “expedited appeal.”