President Trump visited the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington on Monday for the first time since he stunned the cultural and political establishment nearly five weeks ago by taking over the institution.
“We’re here to have our first board meeting,” he told reporters as he toured the center with his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, and a few of the people he has appointed to the center’s board, including the country singer Lee Greenwood (he sings “God Bless the U.S.A.”) and the Fox News personalities Laura Ingraham and Maria Bartiromo.
He had some thoughts about programming.
“I never liked ‘Hamilton’ very much,” he said, taking a poke at a show that canceled a planned tour there next year to protest his takeover of the institution, which had long been bipartisan.
When he was a young man Mr. Trump had dreams of one day becoming a Broadway producer himself. Now, he said, the Kennedy Center’s focus would be on producing “Broadway hits.”
“We’re going to get some very good shows,” he said. “I guess we have ‘Les Miz’ coming.” (Before he was elected to a second term, the Kennedy Center had announced that “Les Misérables,” a longtime Trump favorite, would be performing there in June and July.)
Mr. Trump made himself chairman of the Kennedy Center’s board last month after dismissing all of the Biden-era appointees, upending a bipartisan tradition that had endured for decades.
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Source: Music - nytimes.com
