“That’s the tactic they use,” said Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island senator, pondering whether Donald Trump might attach his name to the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. “You float stuff and you float stuff and you float stuff until people get inured to what a stupid or outrageous thing it is that has been floated and then you pull the trigger.”
Whitehouse was sitting in his Senate office and speaking to the Guardian at 11am on Thursday 18 December. Two hours later, his words proved prophetic. Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, announced on X that the Kennedy Center board had “voted unanimously” to rename it the Trump-Kennedy Center.
In November Whitehouse, the top Democrat on the Senate environment and public works (EPW) committee, launched a formal investigation into allegations of widespread cronyism, financial mismanagement and corruption at what he describes as a “secular temple to the arts”.
Democrats on the committee said they obtained documents that suggest the national cultural centre is being operated as a “slush fund and private club for Trump’s friends and political allies”, resulting in millions of dollars in losses and a significant deviation from its statutory mission.
Personally I’m not letting go of the idea of either burning it down or just letting it rot while turning the rest of the white house into a museum. President can live in a crackshak for all I care, frankly speaking I think they are far too secured for something so easily replaced, if they get mugged in a Denny’s parking lot it shouldn’t even appear on the news.
Wouldn’t be the first time the White House was set ablaze.
I can get behind that.