It is well documented that Donald J. Trump, the former reality television personality, failed real estate developer, and parody of a political candidate, has the opposite of the Medias Touch. Everything he touches turns to shit, and the list of his failures is long and storied. From the casinos to an airline, steaks to vodka, a university to a board game, real estate developments to golf courses, Trump has left a swath of failure in his wake, one failed gold-tinged project after another.
From the moment Donald Trump attempted to insert himself into the Kennedy Center, it was a guaranteed disaster. After he got rid of anyone with the talent and institutional knowledge to run the facility properly and profitably, after he replaced the board with sycophants loyal only to him, after he ran off any artist with a conscience, those deemed too liberal to perform, or anyone interested in buying tickets, for that matter, he failed to put his name on it, so now he wants to tear it all down.
It’s like a law of nature, that everything he touches eventually crumbles, but not before he profits off it in some way: financially, politically, or personally. Once he’s done with it, if it’s not a raging success and he can’t take credit for it, then it must be destroyed. That is what is happening with the Kennedy Center. Nothing more complicated than that.
Prior to Trump’s hostile takeover, the Center was comfortably making a profit of more than $40 million a year. After Trump scuttled all the programming and drove away the artists, as well as their audiences, its finances crumbled, just as anyone who was paying attention could have accurately predicted. Now Trump is trying to claim that there’s a problem with the structural integrity of the building, which would be the first any of us are hearing about it, and quite unlikely.
The truth is, no one wants to perform in, or be a spectator of, his little ego project, and that has left the entire organization in shambles. Now that no one wants to be a part of it, he can’t just sit idly by while his failure is so naked and apparent. He must tear it all down.
If he can’t have it, no one can.
