Trump’s obsession is not with the Kennedy Center. It’s with JFK.

Culture admin June 16, 2026 0 Comments

Trump’s obsession is not with the Kennedy Center. It’s with JFK.

At first glance, President Donald Trump’s fixation on the Kennedy Center is puzzling.

The institution embodies nearly everything he disdains. Its patrons are largely residents of Washington, D.C., which backed Kamala Harris by 90% in the 2024 election. Its programs cater to elite cultural tastes rather than Andrew Lloyd Webber and UFC fights. And its understated modernist architecture is the opposite of the gilded excess that defines his brand.

But his obsession does not appear to be about the symphonies, the concerts or even the building — from which he finally, begrudgingly, removed his name over the weekend. I’d bet it’s about the name that remains on the building: John F. Kennedy.

Trump was 14 when JFK took office and 17 when he was assassinated — meaning Kennedy was likely the first president he followed with any real attention. He possessed all the things Trump has long valued: fame, glamour, wealth and media attention. The Kennedy name is the kind of brand that Trump seems to hope his last name will become.

For a man with a cursory knowledge of his predecessors — such as his surprise that Lincoln was a Republican — Trump comes back to JFK surprisingly often. And like Nixon talking to the portrait of JFK in the Oliver Stone biopic, he’s clearly conflicted. As president, he’s released the records of the Kennedy assassination, appointed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to his Cabinet and compared his wife to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. (“We have our own Jackie O,” he said in 2019. “It’s called Melania, Melania T.”) But he’s also covered Jackie Kennedy’s Rose Garden with pavers, fired staffers of JFK’s presidential library and feuded with members of the Kennedy family.

Seen in this light, Trump’s attempt to change the performing arts center’s name to “The Donald J. Trump and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts” makes more sense, as does his attempt to shutter it for renovations. And the Trump-allied board’s decision Sunday to create a new endowment at the Kennedy Center in his name sounds like an attempt to placate the president after a court ordered his name be removed.

If so, it didn’t work. Trump posted on social media that he was washing his hands of the building and its future.

“Unless I am free to do what I do better than anyone else, bring this Institution back, physically, financially, and artistically, I have no interest in continuing what could only be a hopeless journey into ‘NEVER NEVER LAND,’” he wrote.

If Trump cared about the Kennedy Center itself, having his name taken off the exterior shouldn’t have changed his mind about its future. But if his only goal was to get a little of that Kennedy magic to rub off on him, then it makes sense that he’s no longer interested.

The irony of all this is that JFK’s record is — boomers reading this, avert your eyes — massively overrated. He was too cautious on civil rights, too eager on Vietnam and too wishy-washy on the Bay of Pigs. Most of his legislative goals were achieved under Lyndon Johnson, a crass, foul-mouthed politician who wanted to be at the center of every room, demanded personal loyalty and loved to intimidate senators — in other words, the politician that Trump should have emulated.

LBJ didn’t get to have Marilyn Monroe breathily sing “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” at Madison Square Garden, as JFK did when he turned 45. But neither did Trump, for that matter. Instead, for the week of his 80th birthday, he had a crowd boo him at Madison Square Garden and his name literally stripped from Kennedy’s on an iconic building. The closest thing to Monroe that he got was a generic compliment from a bizarrely dressed UFC fight girl. If history repeats itself, first as tragedy and then as farce, Sunday was less Kennedy’s mythic Camelot and more Monty Python’s “Spamalot.”

The American public has gotten a close look at Trump over the past 10 years. And to borrow a quote, they have told him, “you’re no Jack Kennedy.”