Conspiracy
Trump Requests Demolition Permit For National Monument After Being Told He Cannot Hang His Own Curtains There
By Tah Foil, . BSN Network. Satire.
WASHINGTON, D.C. (BSN) -- The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is a 630,000-square-foot federal monument on the Potomac River, authorized by Congress in 1958, constructed at a cost of $73 million in public funds, and named for a sitting president who was assassinated before he could see it. It hosts roughly 2,000 performances a year, employs the National Symphony Orchestra, and is administered by a board of trustees appointed largely by the White House.
For approximately six months, Donald Trump has been trying to take it over. For approximately six months, the building has not cooperated.
Trump replaced the Kennedy Center's board in February, installed himself as chairman, and moved to cancel several scheduled performances he found objectionable, including a drag-themed cabaret event that had been booked under the previous administration. Courts intervened on some of those decisions. Staff members resigned. The replacement programming has included a tribute to country music, a tribute to gospel music, and, according to one internal schedule that circulated briefly online, a tribute to tribute concerts.
Faced with this record of partial success, Trump reportedly suggested to advisers that if the building could not be reshaped to his satisfaction, it could simply be torn down. This proposal was, by any available measure, extremely illegal, which is how PolitiFact came to spend four working days researching whether the President of the United States is permitted to demolish a building named after a president.
The short answer, according to PolitiFact's analysis, is no. The longer answer involves the National Historic Preservation Act, the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, specific appropriations language from three separate fiscal years, and a footnote from a 1991 Government Accountability Office opinion that nobody outside the GAO has read voluntarily.
Trump addressed the situation Tuesday at a press availability, describing the Kennedy Center as "a building that has been, frankly, very hostile to a certain kind of American who loves this country and loves great art, not the weird art, but the real art, the good art, the art where you can tell what it is."
He added that he had "looked at the numbers on the building" and that "the numbers are not good." He did not specify which numbers. An aide standing to his left nodded in a way that suggested she also did not know which numbers.
Rep. Jim Jordan, appearing on Fox News the same evening, said the demolition question was "exactly the kind of deep-state obstruction that real Americans are tired of," then paused when the host pointed out that the obstruction in question was a law passed in 1958 by a Republican Congress and signed by Dwight Eisenhower. Jordan said that Eisenhower "would have understood" and moved on.
The Kennedy Center's acting director, reached for comment, said the institution "remains committed to its mission of presenting world-class performances to the American public" and that "all facilities questions are being handled at the appropriate federal level." When asked to specify what that level was, the director said, "The appropriate one."
PolitiFact rated the demolition proposal "Pants on Fire," which is their rating for claims that are both false and presumably embarrassing to the person who made them. The rating system was designed in 2007 to evaluate statements about legislation and polling. Its application to questions of federal property destruction is, according to the organization's own methodology page, "an evolving area."
The Kennedy Center has 2,442 seats in its main opera house. Trump's Mar-a-Lago ballroom holds approximately 800. This has not been cited as relevant by any official source.
The story we are making fun of: https://politifact.com/article/2026/sep/18/trump-demolish-kennedy-center-lincoln-memorial/