Former Kennedy Center president speaks out in first interview since her firing [View all]
Source: NPR
February 14, 2025 4:31 PM ET
Deborah Rutter served as president of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for a decade. This week, she was fired. President Trump had replaced many board members with his own supporters. Then, on Wednesday, the new board elected Trump as the center's new chair.
It was a fulfillment of the promise President Trump repeated on Monday to become chairman, along with promising the Kennedy Center's performances would be "good" and "not woke."
Trump previously said that he had never been to a show at the Kennedy Center. "I didn't want to go," he said during a gaggle aboard Air Force One on Sunday. "There was nothing I wanted to see."
In the first interview since her ouster, Deborah Rutter told NPR that she was "really, really, really sad about what happens to our artists, what happens on our stages and our staff who support them." Rutter told All Things Considered host Mary Louise Kelly about the abrupt end of her tenure.
Read more: https://www.npr.org/2025/02/14/nx-s1-5296904/former-kennedy-center-president-speaks-out-in-first-interview-since-her-firing
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