President Donald Trump will appear at the Kennedy Center on Wednesday, where he’s expected to announce the first recipients of its hallmark honors since he seized control of the institution’s board earlier this year.
The visit to the iconic performing arts complex comes as Trump seeks greater authority over Washington, DC, and its most prominent cultural institutions in an aggressive bid to put his stamp on the Democratic-led city.
Trump — who was installed as Kennedy Center chairman in February — teased the new slate of honorees in a Truth Social post on Tuesday that also alluded to Republican efforts in Congress to rename the complex after him.
“GREAT Nominees for the TRUMP/KENNEDY CENTER, whoops, I mean, KENNEDY CENTER, AWARDS,” Trump wrote.
The Kennedy Center later said it’s “honored” to host the president and appeared to preview a slate of honorees that included a “country music icon, an Englishman, a New York City Rock band, a dance Queen and a multi-billion dollar Actor.”
The visit will mark the president’s third Kennedy Center appearance since returning to the White House, underscoring his personal interest in the activities of the performing arts center.
A White House official said Trump would tour the Kennedy Center, as he weighs how to spend the $250 million that Republicans set aside in July for renovations to the center as part of their tax and spending bill.
“Thanks to his advocacy, our beautiful building will undergo renovations to restore its prestige and grandeur,” the Kennedy Center said Tuesday on X.
In addition to taking control of the performing arts center, Trump has pressured DC’s museums, memorials and other historic sites to recast American history in a more favorable light, criticizing what he called in a March executive order a “revisionist movement” meant to “undermine the remarkable achievements of the United States.” On Tuesday, the White House ordered a review of Smithsonian museums and exhibits to ensure alignment with that directive.
The president has also embarked on wide-ranging renovation of the White House. And in an unprecedented move this week fueled by his personal frustration with incidents of crime and homelessness in DC, Trump federalized the city’s police force.
The sprawling effort to exert federal influence across DC is an escalation from his first term, during which he remained largely disengaged from the cultural institutions of a city that had overwhelmingly rejected him at the ballot box. Trump notably declined to attend the Kennedy Center Honors all four years after some of the honorees in 2017 said they would boycott a traditional White House pre-reception.
Yet since returning to office, he has prioritized bending key elements of DC to his will, as part of what officials have framed as an effort to beautify the city and its key institutions and drive out what Trump has long criticized as “woke” elements that don’t conform to his worldview.
The Kennedy Center has served as an early focal point of that project, drawing an institution that had traditionally remained above the fray of partisan politics directly into the center of the nation’s culture wars.
Trump in February dismissed a slew of Democratic appointees from the center’s board of trustees, replacing them with aides and allies that included chief of staff Susie Wiles and second lady Usha Vance. Trump was subsequently elected chairman, with longtime confidant Ric Grenell installed as the Kennedy Center’s new president.
The takeover prompted sharp criticism from Democrats and angered artists connected to the Kennedy Center — including the producer of the hit musical “Hamilton,” who cancelled an upcoming run of the show that was supposed to go through 2026. A series of other prominent artists, including director Shonda Rhimes and musician Ben Folds, resigned from their positions at the center.
Since then, Trump has taken a hands-on approach to overhauling programming and drawing up plans for renovating the complex.
On Monday, the Kennedy Center said it would host the premier of a film produced by the Christian Broadcasting Network that “showcases the remarkable resurgence of faith among the youth in America.” It’s an early sign of how programming may shift under the Trump-appointed leadership. The movie includes an appearance by Ben Carson, Trump’s former secretary of Housing and Urban Development.
That premier follows an earlier run of “Les Misérables” — a favorite musical of Trump’s — that the president attended in June. The appearance drew a mixed reaction, with some attendees booing Trump and four drag queens sitting below the presidential box in protest of his prior vows to rid the Kennedy Center of drag shows.
Yet within the GOP, the Kennedy Center has become another rallying point for demonstrating loyalty to Trump. In July, House Republicans added a measure to a spending bill that would rename the center’s opera house after first lady Melania Trump.
Soon after, Rep. Bob Onder of Missouri introduced the Make Entertainment Great Again Act, which would go a step further and strip former President John F. Kennedy’s name from the complex in favor of making it the “Donald J. Trump Center for Performing Arts.”
But ahead of Trump’s visit on Wednesday, that proposal had yet to gain steam; so far, Onder’s legislation has not attracted a single co-sponsor.
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