The board of the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., voted this week to add another president’s name to its title, and predictably, the left has lost its mind. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt announced the official new name of the Trump-Kennedy Center on Thursday in a post on X.
“I have just been informed that the highly respected Board of the Kennedy Center, some of the most successful people from all parts of the world, have just voted unanimously to rename the Kennedy Center to the Trump-Kennedy Center, because of the unbelievable work President Trump has done over the last year in saving the building,” she said. “Congratulations to President Donald J. Trump, and likewise, congratulations to President Kennedy, because this will be a truly great team long into the future! The building will no doubt attain new levels of success and grandeur.”
Naturally, the left flipped out.
Maria Shriver blasted the renaming in a statement shared to social media. “The Kennedy Center was named after my uncle, President John F Kennedy. It was named in his honor. He was a man who was interested in the arts, interested in culture, interested in education, language, history. He brought the arts into the White House, and he and my Aunt Jackie amplified the arts, celebrated the arts, stood up for the arts and artists.”
She continued, “It is beyond compression [sic] that this sitting president has sought to rename this great memorial dedicated to President Kennedy. It is beyond wild that he would think adding his name in front of President Kennedy’s name is acceptable. It is not. Next thing perhaps he will want to rename JFK Airport, rename the Lincoln Memorial, the Trump Lincoln Memorial. The Trump Jefferson Memorial. The Trump Smithsonian. The list goes on.”
The Kennedy Center is not a memorial. When Congress approved it in 1958, it was designated the National Cultural Center. Only after John F. Kennedy’s assassination was it renamed the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Labeling it a “memorial” is misleading and gives a false impression of the center’s original purpose and intent.
“Can we not see what is happening here? C’mon, my fellow Americans! Wake up! This is not dignified. This is not funny. This is way beneath the stature of the job. It’s downright weird. It’s obsessive in a weird way. Just when you think somone [sic] can’t stoop any lower, down they go…”
Shriver’s outrage might sound compelling until you remember one inconvenient truth: The left loves renaming buildings. They’ve done it repeatedly when it suits their political agenda, and they’ve never batted an eye at the hypocrisy.
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In 2017, Davis Magnet International Baccalaureate Elementary, long named for Jefferson Davis, was renamed Barack Obama Magnet IB Elementary. In 2018, J.E.B. Stuart Elementary School, originally named for Confederate General J.E.B. Stuart, was renamed Barack Obama Elementary School. Now, of course, the left thinks it’s justified in tearing down Confederate statues and renaming buildings after anyone connected to the Confederacy, but there’s also McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas, which had been named after Nevada Senator Pat McCarran, but was then rededicated as Harry Reid International Airport in 2021. And in 2013, the Ariel Rios Federal Building, initially named for an ATF agent killed in the line of duty, was renamed the William Jefferson Clinton Federal Building.
So where was Maria Shriver’s righteous indignation when Democrats were slapping Democrats’ names on everything from elementary schools to airports? Where was her concern about preserving history when the left was erasing historical figures and replacing them with their preferred political icons?
And it’s not like Kennedy’s name was erased. The Trump-Kennedy Center honors both presidents, acknowledging Trump’s role in transforming the institution while preserving Kennedy’s legacy.
The left has spent years weaponizing building names as political statements, from renaming schools, airports, and other buildings to honor modern Democratic heroes to scrubbing away names they find politically offensive at a particular moment. They’ve turned the simple act of naming a building into a culture war battleground.
It’s ironic that they’re clutching their pearls because Trump’s name appears alongside Kennedy’s at a center where Trump’s administration has enacted meaningful reforms.
Shriver’s melodramatic warnings about Trump renaming the Lincoln Memorial or the Jefferson Memorial are stupid arguments designed to manufacture outrage. The Trump-Kennedy Center is a far cry from bulldozing actual memorials and monuments, and she knows it.
If Shriver and her allies truly cared about the integrity of naming buildings after presidents, they would have spoken up long before now.
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