"Kennedy Center cancellations are about "artistic integrity," something hard for Trump appointees to understand" [View all]

[Miles Archer]

Kennedy Center cancellations aren’t about ‘Trump derangement syndrome’
The string of cancellations places artistic integrity over commercial considerations, something likely hard to understand for Trump’s appointees.

https://www.ms.now/opinion/kennedy-center-cancellation-performance-trump

Dec. 30, 2025, 6:50 PM EST
By Hayes Brown

The growing number of musicians and other artists canceling their scheduled performances at the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts is a fallout of President Donald Trump’s efforts to remake the cultural center in his own image. As with his ratings-dud attempt at hosting the annual Kennedy Center Honors this month, this president continues to alienate audiences.

The canceled performances, including ones scheduled for Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, cap a tumultuous year at the center. In February, Trump ousted several members of the center’s bipartisan board of trustees and replaced them with lackies, who swiftly named him chair of the board. The same board voted this month to tack Trump’s name to the front of the historic center. Several stars, including Issa Rae, announced early this year that they would no longer perform at the venue. The result, in tandem with this week’s cancellations, is a performing arts center that may soon be lacking in performances.

Many of the artists who have canceled their gigs made clear that their decision was in reaction to the Trump administration, not the Kennedy Center’s staff or patrons. Ric Grenell, the Trump-appointed president of the Kennedy Center, scoffed at the cancellations, calling the artists “far-left political activists” in a statement to The New York Times. “Boycotting the arts to show you support the arts is a form of derangement syndrome,” he said.

This is exactly the kind of Trumpian bombast that endeared Grenell to the president enough that he was named ambassador to Germany in Trump’s first term. MAGA acolytes have spent the past half-decade deriding any criticism as “Trump derangement syndrome.” But Grenell can’t hand-wave the string of cancellations away quite so easily.