President Donald Trump’s name was added to the center’s facade on Friday, a day after the John F. Kennedy Performing Arts Center’s board of directors voted to rename the Washington facility the Trump Kennedy Center.
Workers taped Trump’s name over the building’s original center name.
The center’s website had already been updated on Thursday to say it was now the “Trump Kennedy Center.”
“Our president, President Donald J. Trump, not only preserved this historic landmark, he created a truly bipartisan place to celebrate the arts,” the center said in a statement Friday.
President Trump took effective control of the Kennedy Center in February, naming himself director and appointing a board of directors that voted on the new name on Thursday.
White House press secretary Caroline Levitt said Thursday that the board “voted unanimously in favor” of the name change.
But Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio), an ex-officio board member, disputed Levitt’s claims.
“I voiced my concerns, asked questions, tried to push the button to never vote yes, but was met with silence,” Beatty said in a post on X. “But in the end I was told it was unanimous.”
Other board members were silent during the vote, saying they would have voted against the name change.
The law that established the center in the 1960s states that its name cannot be changed.
And the law states: “No additional monuments or plaques in the nature of monuments shall be designated or erected in the public areas of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.”
Sen. Andy Kim (D.N.J.) said in a social media post that construction work on the building “needs to stop because it is illegal to make changes without Congress.”
Missouri Republican Rep. Robert Onder proposed a bill in July that would rename the Kennedy Center after Trump. This bill has no co-sponsors.
Kennedy’s family was outraged by the center’s name change.
“It is incomprehensible that a sitting president would try to rename this great monument to President Kennedy,” said Maria Shriver, the late president’s niece. “It’s so far-fetched that he would think it would be acceptable to add his name before President Kennedy’s.”
Mr. Kennedy’s grandson, Jack Schlossberg, suggested that Mr. Kennedy’s decision to run for Congress from New York was the impetus for the name change.
“Mr. Trump has a clear motive to act on Jack for New York,” he said in a social media post. “Our campaign represents everything President Trump cannot resist or defeat.”
CNBC has reached out to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for comment. He is the nephew of the late president.
