The American far left has begun an open boycott of arts institutions it has spent decades claiming to champion, fund, and defend. Their highest profile target is the Trump-Kennedy Center—long treated as a liberal clubhouse, and now reviled due to President Trump and Ambassador Richard Grenell’s modernisation and renovation programmes.
The left’s ire, in reality, stems from the fact that President Trump won an election and has begun restoring seriousness, functionality, and national relevance to one of Washington’s most mismanaged cultural landmarks.
Screenshots circulating online show activists and self-styled “arts defenders” urging performers to cancel appearances, patrons to boycott events, and even cheering for Trump’s death, all in protest of the Center’s association with the current president.
The outrageous behavior is scarcely out of the ordinary for a political side less reliant on policy platforms and more reliant on bullets of deranged assassins. And the offenses claimed are not mismanagement, corruption, or physical decline—those were tolerated for years under previous, liberal management. Rather, the apparent intolerable sin of President Trump’s involvement and influence. Culture, it seems, is only sacred when it remains ideologically captured.
Ambassador Richard Grenell recently laid bare what that capture looked like in practice. “The woman who had the job before me was getting paid $1.4 million a year with an expense account to travel the world – and yet the elevators didn’t all work, the fountains were broken, the roof was leaking, the foundation was crumbling and the inside lounges weren’t touched since 1973. Donald Trump saved it. The Trump Kennedy Center means bipartisan support – if the Democrats will stop cancelling the Arts.”
The quote is damning not just for what it says about incompetence, but for how little outrage it provoked from the very people now pretending to care about the institution’s “soul.”
Under previous management, the Kennedy Center functioned less as a national cultural hub than as a patronage mill for a narrow ideological circle—lavish salaries, cushy contracts, and pet projects rewarding friends and allies while the building itself literally fell apart.
By contrast, the recent Kennedy Center Honors were a critical success, drawing broad acclaim rather than partisan sneers. Major national events—including the World Cup Draw—are now being hosted there once again, restoring the Center’s status as a venue for the whole country, not just one political faction.
The boycott hysteria is not about protecting art; it is about losing control. When the arts stop serving as a closed loop for liberal credentialism and start reflecting national life again, the same activists who once demanded endless subsidies suddenly discover a taste for cancellation. The irony is rich: the left is burning down the cultural house it claimed to own simply because it no longer runs the place.
The National Pulse has been reporting on corruption, bloated salaries, and asset abuse at the Kennedy Center since at least 2020. Readers can revisit that reporting here.
