The word “coup” has been getting thrown around a lot lately, for no better reason than all of the various governmental institutions that are having their leadership suddenly overthrown or dismantled as part of a sudden and aggressive changing of regimes. (Weird, right?) Still, even by 2025 standards, it’s kind of hard to hear that Donald Trump is publicly plotting to fire the board of the John F. Kennedy Center For The Performing Arts and install himself as its new head and not think, “Gosh, that sure does sound like a coup.”
Because nothing says “fun Friday entertainment news” like sifting through the United States legal code to see whether Glorious Leader is doing something blatantly illegal with one of America’s only genuinely bipartisan government institutions, we went looking tonight through 20 U.S. Code § 76h, which lays out the selection process for Kennedy Center trustees. There are a bunch of people who have to be on the board—the Librarian of Congress, the Secretary of State, and the mayor of Washington D.C. all get automatic spots—but there’s also a group of 36 general trustees who are appointed by the President to serve 6-year terms. Per The New York Times, past presidents have been pretty careful not to rock the boat with these picks too much; the split in recent years has been evenly divided between Democratic and Republic appointees, with Joe Biden, as one of his last acts in office, replacing some outgoing Obama-era appointees with his own picks, including former White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. There’s nothing in the code that says anything about the President being able to fire appointees, either their own or their predecessors’; possibly the people drafting the code didn’t think that level of pissant pettiness would ever occur to a sitting head of state.
With numerous artistic venues, educational programs, artist-in-residence programs, and other forms of cultural outreach, The Kennedy Center is a key body in setting the general artistic tone of the nation. It also holds the prestigious Kennedy Center Honors, which Trump skipped out on attending during his previous administration because he’d been heavily criticized by some of its honorees. Trump’s Truth Social post, of course, skipped over his own bruised ego to point his all-consuming tetchiness at the horrors of things like supporting drag as an American art form, writing that “Just last year, the Kennedy Center featured Drag Shows specifically targeting our youth — THIS WILL STOP.”
As for the Chairman job, that appointment is covered under section 76k, which makes it clear that it’s one of the key powers of the board. The current Chairman is David M. Rubenstein, a billionaire investment firm guy and George W. Bush appointee who’s had the chairman job since 2010, and who previously said he planned to step down back in January—until Trump won the 2024 election. (Day-to-day administration for the Center is handled by the group’s President, currently Deborah F. Rutter, who’s so far managed to avoid catching any strays in this latest tantrum.) Trump’s apparently been talking about wanting to set himself as the Center’s Chairman ever since winning the election, presumably on the grounds that it’s an extremely prestigious position that involves other people doing most of the work, and it would mean he’d get to take a shiny bauble from another rich guy. On the plus side, this was the only conceivable way Joe Rogan was ever going to win the Mark Twain Prize For American Humor, which should make for a fitting tombstone for the entire concept of American comedy.
[via Deadline]
