Now—as the Center prepares to shut down for two years of the classiest renovations humanly imaginable after Trump’s big “America’s 250th Birthday” celebration (and its attendant White House UFC bouts) slam their way through the nation’s capitol on July 4—Trump has announced his intent to swap out the puppets he uses to control this particular playhouse. Specifically, the president went on his Truth Social screeching platform on Friday to announce that he was setting aside current president Ric Grenell, who took the job after Trump seized control of the Center’s board in the earliest weeks of his second presidency, and replacing him with current vice president of operations Matt Floca.
Somewhat amazingly, given what a (relatively, for a Trump-appointed official) long tenure he’s had in the job, Grenell is not getting the “scapegoat who betrayed me” treatment in Trump’s public statement about the swap, with his work at what Trump insists on calling the “Trump Kennedy Center” instead labeled as “an excellent job in helping to coordinate various elements of the Center during the transition period” ahead of the renovations. (CNN does note that Trump hasn’t been happy about publicity surrounding the reno, though, so it’s possible we’re seeing that rarest of things: Trump filtering his attitude toward someone for public consumption.) It is, honestly, about as measured a posting as you’re likely to see while scanning the 8 million ads and memes that pop up on the site we occasionally use to check in how the guy with control over all our nukes is feeling on any given day; at the very least, Trump’s post about Grenell doesn’t involve professional wrestling language being employed while talking about the bombing of a foreign nation, or shots of Wii Sports attached to drone strike footage, and thus can be read as something of a new standard for presidential decorum.
Grenell will formally depart the job on Monday, with the Trump-set board then voting the relatively unknown Floca in. Grenell has been a stalwart of the Trump school of Kennedy Center management, which is to say that he’s spent his tenure in the job loudly denying that anything’s wrong, calling artists criticizing the Center liars, and using the term “fake news” on something approaching a daily basis. Tragically, there’s only so far that this level of imitation-as-flattery can take you, though, and Grenell will now be departing the gig.
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