Trump Slaps His Name on the Kennedy Center

Summary

Bulwark Takes Episode Summary

Podcast: Bulwark Takes
Episode: Trump Slaps His Name on the Kennedy Center
Date: December 20, 2025
Host: JVL (Josh Barro)
Guest: Katherine Rampell

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Episode Overview

This episode centers on the startling and controversial move by the Kennedy Center’s board to add Donald Trump’s name to the iconic Washington DC arts complex—now newly dubbed the "Donald J. Trump – John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Arts." Hosts JVL and Katherine Rampell dissect not just the legality and implications of the name change, but place it in the broader context of authoritarian showmanship, cultural co-option, and institutional rebranding under the Trump administration. The pair also reflect on what these symbolic acts say about American institutions, the enforcement of the law, and the ongoing battle over the nation’s cultural identity.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Immediate Reactions and the "Unanimous" Board Vote

• The hosts open with bemusement and skepticism over how quickly Trump’s name has been splashed on the Kennedy Center ("they are up there on scaffolding… it did just happen like 12 hours ago." — JVL, [01:39]).
• Katherine notes Trump has long fixated on getting his name attached to storied institutions:

  "He clearly very desperately wants this great cultural institution named for him. I’m sure he’s shocked that the board decided to do so, even." – Katherine Rampell ([02:18])

• Both mock the claim that the board’s renaming decision was truly unanimous; Katherine quips:

  "This is like North Korea Unanimous." – Katherine Rampell ([03:07])

2. White House Reaction and Surreal Official Statements

• JVL and Katherine riff on Trump’s press secretary’s gushing message on X, lampooning the idea that Trump and JFK would be a “great team."

  "Congratulations to President Donald J. Trump, and likewise, congratulations to President Kennedy, because this will be a truly great team long into the future." – (quoting Caroline Levitt, Trump Press Secretary, [03:28])
  JVL deadpans:
  "No one tell her." ([03:46])

3. Is This Even Legal? Precedent, Law, and Norm Erosion

• JVL points out that renaming the Kennedy Center requires an act of Congress, rendering this move remarkable in its lawlessness:

  "If you or I were to walk up to the Kennedy Center and just start, like, adding letters to the facade, we’d get arrested. But that’s what they’re doing. They’re breaking the law." – JVL ([04:07])

• Katherine contextualizes it:

  "Is it legal? No. Is it the worst thing that this president has done? Probably also no… But I do take your point. This is upsetting and emblematic… of a much broader approach that this administration has toward just really seizing all of the parts of government and channeling them in the President's own name and interests. Literally his name." ([05:04])

• JVL's frustration at collective willingness to play along:

  "Everyone just agrees to go and pretend with him. It is like the stolen election of 2020. What's the harm if we just humor him this little bit more?" ([06:03])

• He draws a link between minor norm-breaking and major breaches:

  "If you can’t enforce the little stuff… then you’re never going to enforce the big stuff because there are real trade offs involved often in enforcing the laws on the big stuff." ([06:58])

4. Cultural Authoritarianism and the Bigger Picture

• Katherine lays out the broader pattern:

  "This is part of a broader pattern of trying to co-opt, censor, or change speech of various kinds… the administration is doing to censor words… Gulf of Mexico, or disability… The Kennedy Center in isolation, it’s not that big of a deal… The problem is it’s part of this much broader pattern of trying to change cultural institutions and trying to change forms of expression, means of expression, the content of expression within this country." ([07:03])

• JVL compares the move to Soviet renaming and other historical authoritarianisms:

  "These sorts of cultural pieces of authoritarianism… never happen in isolation. They're always part of a broad campaign… Like the Soviet Union… When they were going through compiling lists of poets and composers who had like, deviationist thoughts or deviationist music or poetry. They were renaming cities… Normal regimes don’t do this sort of thing." ([10:01])

5. Institutional Damage, Reversibility, and Long-term Legacy

• Katherine laments the loss, both symbolic and literal:

  "For something like the Kennedy Center, I suppose new president can come in and change it back. The East Wing is gone. Like, you can't, you can't go back in time and change that… Some of these other institutions, you can't just quickly undo the damage and rebuild them." ([10:53])

• JVL notes the differences between superficial and systemic damage:

  "The superficial stuff is easy. The other stuff is hard, hard to undo. If you break down the wall between the Fed and the executive branch and the president, you make the Fed into a political body. Hard to undo that…" ([12:23])

6. The Politics of Naming – After Trump

• JVL predicts a durable, even posthumous, wave of “Trump-naming.”

  "Five minutes after Trump goes home to meet his lord, half of the high school football stadiums in America are gonna be named after him. Right. You go down south into any red state, and they're gonna name every fourth building they can find after him." ([13:14])

• Katherine questions this, suggesting the incentive is highest while Trump is alive and wielding power—but admits nobody can forecast the long-term symbolic battles.
• JVL offers another interpretation:

  "The reason they do it after he's dead is to trigger their local opposition… you know that if you name the high school after him, it’s going to drive [liberals] insane. And so that can create political capital for you locally." ([13:24])

7. Satire: What’s Next for the Trump Kennedy Center?

• Katherine and JVL trade barbs about what future programming might look like at the freshly rebranded center:

  "We know that he loves Andrew Lloyd Webber." – Katherine Rampell ([14:13])
  "We’re going to get a Starlight Express. Do you think we’ll get a production of the Starlight Express?" – JVL ([14:22])
  "Maybe we'll get a version of Cats that's like they're eating the cats." – Katherine Rampell ([14:28])

• Rampell riffs on possible shows:

  "A friend of mine actually came up with a list of some of the musical adaptations… Guy and Dolls. Not a musical, but King Lear. L-E-E-R. As I like it. Othello is a very low IQ individual. I barely remember Mama." ([14:34])

• She jokes about the “stadium naming curse,” referencing failed ventures like Enron Field and FTX Arena, and wonders aloud if the “Trump Kennedy Center” will soon belong to that pantheon. ([15:45])

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• "This is like North Korea Unanimous."
  — Katherine Rampell ([03:07])
• "No one tell her. Don’t tell her."
  — Josh Barro, riffing on Trump’s press secretary hailing the Trump-Kennedy “team” ([03:46])
• "Everyone just agrees to go and pretend with him… It is like the stolen election of 2020. What's the harm if we just humor him this little bit more?"
  — JVL ([06:03])
• "These sorts of cultural pieces of authoritarianism… never happen in isolation. They're always part of a broad campaign."
  — JVL ([10:01])
• "I personally like the idea of calling the soon to be constructed East Wing ballroom, the E. Jean Carroll Ballroom, for example. She's owed something at least of that magnitude."
  — Katherine Rampell, on culinary retributive naming ([11:34])
• "Maybe we'll get a version of Cats that's like they're eating the cats."
  — Katherine Rampell ([14:28])
• "We won't get that lucky."
  — JVL, on the hope that the “Trump Kennedy Center” could bring about hubristic downfall ([16:06])

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [01:39] — Episode begins; JVL and Katherine react to the breaking news
• [02:35] — "Unanimous" board vote and North Korea comparison
• [03:28] — Trump’s press secretary celebrates Trump-Kennedy “team”
• [04:07] — Discussion: the legality of renaming the Kennedy Center
• [06:03] — Broader lessons and norm erosion
• [07:03] — Rampell on pattern of censorship, speech restriction
• [10:01] — JVL extends comparison to Soviet renaming
• [10:53] — Institutional damage and legacy
• [13:14] — Will everything be named Trump after he’s gone?
• [14:13] — Satirical speculation on future arts programming
• [15:45] — Stadium naming curse and final predictions

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Tone and Takeaway

With pointed sarcasm, historical perspective, and genuine alarm, JVL and Katherine highlight the absurdity and underlying menace of the Trump administration's quest for symbolic dominance—turning the renaming of the Kennedy Center into an emblem of wider assaults on American norms, legal process, and expressive freedom. They blend laughs with lamentation, satire with sober analysis, encouraging listeners to see such headline news as connected to broader changes in American civic life.

The hosts suggest: if we laugh too easily or look away from these “small” abuses, we risk paving the way for consequences we can’t simply rebrand or reconstruct in the future.

Transcript

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[Josh Barro]

That's shipstation.com hello everyone, this is JVL here with my bulwark colleague Katherine Rampel. And as we are sitting down to talk to you, the people agents of the state are adding Donald Trump's name to the Kennedy center building. They are up there on a scaffolding on the facade changing the name to the Donald J. Trump hyphen. John F. Kennedy Memorial center for the Arts or something. I. Catherine, I know we shouldn't be surprised that he liked to move on this so fast, but it did just happen like 12 hours ago.

[Katherine Rampell]

Yes, but he has been teasing it for weeks, months, I don't know. He clearly very desperately wants this great cultural institution named for him. You know, I'm sure he's shocked that the board decided to do so, even.

[Josh Barro]

Though unanimously I saw the vote was unanimous.

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Board members of the Kennedy center voted unanimously to rename it the Trump Kennedy Center.

[Josh Barro]

What's your reaction to that? Well, I was honored by.

[Katherine Rampell]

The board, is a very distinguished board, most distinguished people in the country.

[Josh Barro]

And I was surprised by it, and.

[Katherine Rampell]

I was honored by it. Well, sort of. There was one participant, a lawmaker who I believe was on the board, who said that her line was. So she was not allowed to vote against it.

[Josh Barro]

This is like North Korea Unanimous.

[Katherine Rampell]

Yes, exactly. Exactly.

[Josh Barro]

Excellent.

[Katherine Rampell]

But, yes, he's been wanting this for a long time. And of course, his press secretary had to weigh in and congratulate him. Caroline Levitt wrote on X a note of congratulations, saying that she has just been informed that the highly respected board of the Kennedy center has decided to rename it after him. And at one point she says, congratulations to President Donald J. Trump, and likewise, congratulations to President Kennedy, because this will be a truly great team long into the future. So I'm glad to hear that.

[Josh Barro]

No one tell her.

[Katherine Rampell]

I'm glad to hear.

[Josh Barro]

Don't tell her.

[Katherine Rampell]

Trump and President Kennedy are teaming up big, if true. As the kids say, zombie jfk. Zombie JFK has given his blessing, according to Caroline Levitt, and not only that, will be participating somehow in the programming, I don't know, going on into the future.

[Josh Barro]

So I. The thing that I am stuck on because I'm a silly, silly man, is that this isn't legal. So the Kennedy center is created by. By an act of Congress, and it's. There's a law that was signed with its name, just like there was an act of Congress creating the Department of Defense. And so there's a law saying that this thing is called the Department of Defense. And so to change that, you would have to pass a law. Now, that has not deterred Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump and everybody in the White House from talking about the Department of War. It hasn't deterred them from sending a guy up on a scaffolding to put his name on the facade of the Kennedy Center. It isn't legal. I saw somebody, maybe it was Chris Hayes said, like, you know, if you or I were to walk up to the Kennedy center and just start, like, adding letters to the facade, we'd get arrested. But that is what they're doing. They're breaking the law.

[Katherine Rampell]

Yeah. I live in New York, where oftentimes you'll see people, like, amend the different subway signs, usually to create some funny, juvenile alternative version of what subway lines are going on. And it feels a little bit like that. But look, is it legal? No. Is it the worst thing that this president has done? Probably also no. In the sense that there are a lot of other laws and maybe our founding document that he seems pretty keen on breaking all the time. And those are arguably of greater consequence. But I do take your point. This is upsetting and emblematic, I guess, of a much broader approach that this administration has toward just really seizing all of the parts of government and, and channeling them in the President's own name and interests. Literally his name.

[Josh Barro]

Literally his name. I mean, you know, the Gulf of Mexico became the Gulf of America. It didn't become that. Like everybody, this is what gets me. Everyone just agrees to go and pretend with him. It is like the stolen election of 2020. What's the harm if we just humor him this little bit more? And so the playbill at the Kennedy center will say the Trump Kennedy center, and they will say it on the facade, and everybody will just pretend this is a thing that's real in the same way that they pretend that the Gulf America, Gulf of America is a real thing, or the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace or the Department of War. I guess I just sort of rebel against that and resent. I feel like we have laws. Laws are made up of words that have very strict meaning. And if you can't enforce the little stuff, which is essentially painless, it would be painless to enforce the law on this, then you're never going to enforce the big stuff because there are real trade offs involved often in enforcing the laws on the big stuff.

[Katherine Rampell]

Right, right. And this is part of a broader pattern of trying to co opt, censor, or change speech of various kinds. Artistic expression, this is literally an artistic venue. But there's a lot of other things that this administration is doing to censor words that are used. I mean, just as an example, Head Start locations can no longer use the words women, Gulf of Mexico, or disability in how they describe themselves. The FBI has been compiling ways to track antifa, which is basically code for any sort of wrong think, according to this administration, anything anti Christianity, anti capitalism, et cetera. So, you know, the, the Kennedy center in isolation, it's not that big of a deal. Even though you and I both love the arts, we talk about the arts all the time. It's very sad. The problem is it's part of this much broader pattern of trying to change cultural institutions and trying to change forms of expression, means of expression, the content of expression within this country. Problem is, it is not in isolation. This is happening in conjunction with all of these other campaigns to change the very fabric of America and how we talk and speak and sing and listen to music for that matter.

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[Josh Barro]

Yeah, and that's the thing. Like these, if you just look historically, these sorts of cultural pieces of authoritarianism, they never happen in isolation. They're always part of a broad campaign. Right. This is you and I talked about this earlier. Like, this was the Soviet Union, you know, especially in the early days of Stalin when they were going through compiling lists of poets and composers who had like, deviationist thoughts or deviationist music or poetry. They were renaming cities, you know, to Stalingrad. And what. I mean, normal regimes don't do this sort of thing. In the same way, normal regimes don't go and knock down the east wing of the White House without telling anybody. You know, like it's. They're inextricably linked, aren't they?

[Katherine Rampell]

Yeah, they absolutely are. And then the question is, what will be the enduring legacy of these efforts to Change our institutions. I mean, the, whether we're talking about the, the literal infrastructure, places like the Kennedy center or the East Wing, these, these physical brick and mortar locations, or more abstract kinds of institutions like the institution of the Federal Reserve or the DOJ or anything else that he's also slapping his name or agenda on, literally or figuratively. And, you know, for something like the Kennedy Center, I suppose new president can come in and change it back. The East Wing is gone. Like, you can't, you can't go back in time and change that. Whatever comes out of this new construction project, presumably they could rebrand. Right. I personally like the idea of calling the soon to be constructed East Wing ballroom the E. Jean Carroll Ballroom, for example. She's owed something at least of that magnitude. There are different ways you could handle it, but some of these other institutions, you can't just quickly undo the damage and rebuild them. That's. It's not the same thing as, like, you know, scraping off the gold lame that Donald Trump has plastered all over a building.

[Josh Barro]

Yeah. I mean, in theory, you could change back some of the stuff in Washington. Right. Although it's hard. Right. The, the superficial stuff is easy. The, the other stuff is hard, hard to undo. If you break down the, the wall between the Fed and the executive branch and the president, you make the Fed into a political body. Hard to undo that, because you can undo it, but you got to wait for the rest of the market to buy in and believe that it's permanent. And I just, I don't know that anybody's gonna have the will to do it. And then when you get outside of the federal government, this is something Sarah and I talk about all the time. Five minutes after Trump goes home to meet his lord, half of the high school football stadiums in America are gonna be named after him. Right. You go down south into any red state, and they're gonna name every fourth building they can find after him.

[Katherine Rampell]

Maybe. I feel like if they were gonna do that, they'd be doing it already. Maybe I'm wrong, but there are so many incentives right now to suck up to Dear Leader while he is still kicking.

[Josh Barro]

Well, no, see, this is, this is my theory. My theory is the reason they do it after he's dead is to trigger their local opposition. Right. It's not about. If you are like the Carteret county school board in North Carolina, you don't think that Donald Trump is going to notice you if you name the high school after him, but he dies and your local libs are all excited about it. You know that if you name the high school after him, it's going to drive them insane. And so that can create political capital for you locally.

[Katherine Rampell]

Maybe. I don't know. I feel like this is requiring so much armchair psychoanalyzing. Somewhere down the line, who knows what his legacy will be. Also, the time he's. He's gone. I will say on a, on a lighter note, I am somewhat looking forward to the programing that could come from a Trump Kennedy Center. We know that he loves Andrew Lloyd Webber.

[Josh Barro]

Loves Andrew Lloyd Weber. We're going to get a Starlight Express. Do you think we'll get a production of the Starlight Express?

[Katherine Rampell]

I don't know. I mean, I'm guessing we'll have some more revivals of Phantom. Maybe we'll get a version of Cats that's like they're eating the cats. I don't know. I mean, there are a lot of, lot of bad puns here. A friend of mine actually came up with a list of some of the musical adaptations that I'll just read you some of them. Guy and Dolls. Not a musical, but King Lear. L E E R As I like it. Othello is a very low IQ individual. I barely remember Mama. So anyway, you can have some fun with all of that. Maybe we'll get some nice little parodies out of it. The other thing that I'm wondering about is whether the Kennedy center or the new namesake of the Trump Kennedy center will be subject to the stadium naming curse. I don't know if you're familiar with this, but there are a lot of these infamous examples of big venues that whose naming rights were sold to some hubristic benefactor of various kinds of that ultimately or soon after the naming rights came down actually had a spectacular failure. So I'm thinking things like Enron Field, FTX arena, there are a whole bunch of these. And I do wonder if you will see Trump Kennedy center be the omen of a spectacular failure of sorts for maybe Trump, maybe Kennedy. I mean, Kennedy is looking forward to all of that teamwork ahead. But you never know. Maybe this could be portend something more dire.

[Josh Barro]

We won't get that lucky. All right, Catherine, thank you for sitting down with this, guys. Hit like hit. Subscribe, follow the channel. We will be back very soon to talk about the next terrible thing that has happened because that's the world we live in. Good luck, America. Quick, choose a meal deal with McValue. The $5 McChicken meal deal, a $6 McDouble meal deal, or the new $7 Daily Double meal deal, each with its own small fries, drink and Four Piece McNuggets. There's actually no rush. I'm just excited for McDonald's for a limited time only. Prices and participation may vary.

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[Josh Barro]

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