“Bill Clinton criticizes Trump’s Kennedy Center renaming battle: ‘It’s hard to make up’”, 22 September 2026 (Photo via Washington Examiner — the original report)
As it ran on the front
The tradition of not renaming the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts after whichever president currently occupies the Oval Office died sometime this month, funeral arrangements still being sorted, and everyone from the bench to the ballroom to a man who once occupied that same office has now said so out loud.
The paperwork came first. On Sept. 15, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper ruled that the Kennedy Center board's push to put Donald Trump's name on the building was unlawful — even dressed up, as the board tried to dress it, as an honor for "President Trump's current achievements." A sitting president does not get the building; that was the whole rule, and now it has a docket number.…
…(cont) The building did not wait for an appeal. The next night, Wednesday, hours after a rally in North Carolina, a photographer caught the president on Air Force One studying a printout of a graphic that read, simply, "Kennedy Center DEMOLISHED." Blocked from renaming it, he had moved on to threatening it.
That same week, the family weighed in, and not gently. A niece of President Kennedy accused Trump of "hostage-taking" the center and, in the same statement, of "bankrupting" it. Kerry Kennedy, sister of the health secretary, called the board's vote to shutter the main building "a tragedy" and noted, correctly, that the American people love the arts. By Sept. 18 the wider Kennedy family was on record calling the whole campaign "small minded" and "narcissistic," while the board — handpicked by the man they were describing — voted to close the building anyway, renovations held hostage until Trump gets his way.
Into this arrived, on Tuesday, Bill Clinton, who used the opening of his own Global Initiative to note that the fight was "hard to make up." He is not wrong. He is also late; the judge said it first, the niece said it harder, and the building itself has already been threatened with demolition once this month. This is not commentary anymore. It is bunk, dressed as a preservation project.
The norm is survived by a lawsuit, a shuttered lobby, and a family that keeps having to say the same thing in different words. It was preceded in death by nothing; norms like this one tend to go quietly until someone tries to carve his name into them.
In lieu of flowers, leave the building's name alone.
🍺
“They keep telling you it's just a building, but watch the order of operations: the court says no, the family says no, and the answer is to threaten to level the place instead of walking away. That's not a tantrum, that's the tell — somebody wants his name on it bad enough to burn it down if he can't have it, and the thing burning is a public arts center, not his.”
“A leader's contributions deserve to be honored, and if the board — his own board, appointed through the normal, totally standard process — wants to recognize that, why should a judge get the final say? Look, "destined to doom" was clearly said in frustration, not as a — actually, forget I characterized his mood, I wasn't in the room.”
After Trump promised taxpayers would not pay "one dime" for the ballroom, Republicans proposed $1 billion in taxpayer funds for it. Congress rejected the ask NBC News, May 2026
Former President Bill Clinton on Tuesday scolded President Donald Trump for battling to rename the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts after himself, urging the White House to focus instead on more pressing issues. Clinton made the comments during a speech at the opening of the annual Clinton Global Initiative meeting in New…
President Donald Trump is coming under heavy criticism after a photograph taken on Wednesday suggested that his threats to destroy the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts are very real. Shortly after attending a Wednesday night rally in North Carolina, Trump was caught on camera by photographer Brendan Smialowski…
The family of former President Kennedy slammed President Trump for his ongoing legal battle to put his name on the Kennedy Center and to close the building for planned renovations. The Kennedy Center board, handpicked by Trump, voted Tuesday to close the main building, but Trump said the renovations will not happen as long as...
Former President Clinton is knocking President Trump's plans for a triumphal arch and the efforts to put his name on the Kennedy Center, saying that global challenges would be more easily dealt with if leaders "didn't care as much about who got the credit." The 42nd president delivered opening remarks at the opening of the annual Clinton…
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