Barred from renaming the Kennedy Center, Trump threatens demolition; its own overseers call that nearly impossible.

…(cont) Two days later a photographer caught him on Air Force One, home from a rally in North Carolina, studying a large printout of the words Kennedy Center DEMOLISHED, the way a man studies a menu he has already ordered from.

By the 18th the fantasy had paperwork behind it. The board he had personally appointed voted that Tuesday to close the main building. He told reporters the renovations will not happen. The Hill reported the same day that his administration was floating what it called the nuclear option. JFK's own family called it narcissistic before the news cycle had even turned over.

Survived by: a federal ruling, defied in spirit if not yet in law; a family rebuke; a board of overseers who, asked this week by the Times whether any of this could actually be carried out, answered — not easily. Preceded in death by: the renaming plan itself, blocked at every filing; and whatever was left of the idea that this was ever about honoring anyone.

The overseers are not being coy. A landmark performing-arts center does not come down because a chairman studied a printout on a plane; the Times found the daunting challenges, plural, stacked between that photograph and reality. The demolition, by every account but the one in his lap, is hogwash.

Which is rather the point. The building will likely still stand this time next year. But the threat already worked: it dared a judge, a family, and a board of his own choosing to say so out loud, and they did — and there was still a photograph the next morning of the word DEMOLISHED, riding home from a rally, like a eulogy rehearsed for a building that has not agreed to die.

In lieu of flowers, the Kennedy Center asks only that you read the ruling twice blocked, and remember whose name was never actually the one in danger.