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The Bulwark
BREAKING: Judge Denies Trump Request for Stay on Removing Name from Kennedy Center
00:13:00
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- [00:00]
Sonny Bunch
Hey everybody, welcome back to Bulwark Takes. We got a very special live episode here. We've got, we've got, Brendan is down at the Kennedy Center. We're trying to connect with him. But we've got here in studio Bill Kristol who has some breaking news updates about what may be happening with the name of the Kennedy center, which is of course still just the John F. Kennedy Memorial center for the Performing Arts, whatever you see there on the front of the building. But the rest of that should be coming down here maybe momentarily. Bill, before, before we get to the meat of this, I just want to kind of set the stage here. You know, I get all the emails from the Kennedy Center. I get, you know, come ons for ticket sales. I get the press stuff. And very pointedly, for the last, you know, several months to a year or so, it's been the Donald J. Trump John F. Kennedy center, right? Like that's the logo, the Trump Kennedy Center. And like two weeks ago that went away. That just stopped, that stopped being in the emails. And now we have just the reg. Just back to the Kennedy center logo. What's going on? What has changed and where do we stand on the name of the Kennedy Center?
- [01:08]
Bill Kristol
So late last year, as you know, the Trump appointed board decided that it should be the Donald Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial Kennedy Center. And Trump was pleased with this. And they probably got to work changing everything from the emails to the website to the, as we can see to what's on the front of the building there. Representative Joyce Beatty of Ohio brought a lawsuit, actually quite courageously. I just want to say a word about her. I mean, others would not. She's on the board, she's ex officio. Various members of Congress are on the board of the Kennedy center, which otherwise is stacked by Trump appointees. The executive appointments, others didn't step up. And she stepped up and said, she said there were irregularities in the decision making. It's contrary to the law which says, the law that set it up in 64 says it shall be called the John F. Kennedy Center Memorial center for the Performing Arts. She wrote a lawsuit, she went to a White House meeting by herself that wouldn't let her bring any staff, surrounded by top White House and administration officials and objected when they sort of formalized the act which gave her standing to sue. So she sued. She wanted very strong opinion about a couple of weeks ago before those emails changed from Judge Cooper here in D.C. wrote a 90 plus page opinion saying this is ridiculous. You have no legal status to do this. You, you didn't do it legally, you know, you shouldn't do it in the first place. You didn't follow the right procedures anyway in doing it. Remove the name within two weeks. So that's when you started getting the different emails. And the website looked different, but. And it looked like they were just going to comply. It was a very, I'm told, airtight opinion. I looked at it a bit myself and, you know, they, the Trump people do not have a good case, but two or three days ago, they reversed. They said, nope, we weren't going to ask for a stay halt in the removal of the name so we can appeal the actual substantive decision. The stay got turned down by Judge Cooper about an hour ago and now they're considering whether to appeal the stay so they can get it, you know, held up while they, you know, pending the resolution on the merits. I don't think they have a very good chance of winning that either. But you never know. D.C. circuit, you draw two strong Trumpy judges out of three for the panel. They could win that for a week. But I think either way, it's coming down. It could come down. And the deadline just in. The original decision two weeks ago is midnight tonight. So it should come down in the next few hours. That's why that they, earlier this morning, they built that scaffolding that we see. They had workmen, they're kind of expecting, I take it, that they would lose the appeal of this day. So it's been a nice little mini drama here and a nice vindication of the rule of law. Not to be too highfalutin about it, but it really is the case that Congress did a. If they want to go to Congress and change the name of it, they could, they can do that, but they can't just do it arbitrarily.
- [03:51]
Sonny Bunch
Yeah, I mean, this is, you know, this is the thing that drives me craziest about all this. Right. Is that there is a law. There's a law that says this is the name of the building and they just decided to go and change it. And they did it in the worst way. I mean, people can see. I just look at, look at, look at the spacing on those letters. It's not right. It's. Come on, it's half assed. The. I can't wait to get Brendan on here in a second because he's been literally hanging out in his car in the early hours of the morning, stalking the building to see if these are going to be coming down. But let's. It does feel like something changed within the Trump White House in terms of their strategy here. Right. It looked like everything was just going to happen, and then all of a sudden it's like, wait, actually, they might fight this. Which is, which was kind of surprising.
- [04:37]
Bill Kristol
I feel like some Trump aide walked into the Oval, one of the more aggressive, sort of belligerent type A, likes to stoke Trump up and said, do you realize that we're not even fighting this bad court decision by this terrible appointee, Judge Cooper? And Trump said, God damn it, appeal it. You know, and so they, they sought the stay or at least seek us. Yeah, see, I don't think Trump said seek a stay. He doesn't know what that is. But they see, Trump said, stop it. He said, okay, we're going to try to get. We're going to try to get a stay. Now they've lost that. And I'm told by someone pretty close to the case that, I mean, if you're a serious person at the Justice Department, even semi serious in the Trump era, you don't want to be going to the D.C. circuit for things like this. You got a lot of other issues there. You want to have goodwill from the judges. You don't want to make them, you know, have an emergency meeting on this kind of thing where you're going to. You don't have a good case. On the other hand, they probably don't want to get in a huge fight with Trump. You know what I mean? It's like the prudent thing is just to let it drop. And I think some people in justice have been counseling that and expecting it, really. But apparently in the last hour that, you know, and I think people expected, therefore, when they lost the decision an hour ago, that would be it. But there was a delay. They wouldn't confirm that they would not appeal. That's why the workers are waiting. That's why the opposing counsel apparently is waiting to hear. There's been some rumors that someone from the Justice Department was seen walking into the D.C. circuit building downtown who might be literally physically bringing the paper for the appeal. So I don't know. I don't think. We don't know, but I think we'll know soon. It is a good. Yeah, you'd like to be the fly on the wall, right? For the moment that Trump finds out that his justice and the moment Todd Blanche finds out that Trump is annoyed that his Justice Department, which Blanche is the obviously acting Attorney General of and nominated to be Attorney general that Trump is annoyed at him for, why aren't you fighting for me in this thing. This is an outrage. And suddenly they hopped to it. They filed a ridiculous little motion for the stay, which got slapped out immediately by Judge Cooper. But we'll see what happens on the appeal.
- [06:32]
Sonny Bunch
All right, I think we've got Brendan. Brendan, can you hear us? I can't, I can't. Did you hear, could you hear Brendan, Bill?
- [06:43]
Bill Kristol
No, no, that is Brendan. I can confirm. That's right.
- [06:45]
Sonny Bunch
I can see him. I can see him, but I, I can't. I can't hear. We can't hear him yet. All right, well, let's.
- [06:53]
Bill Kristol
Can I say I, I could tell maybe while friend is getting it to work.
- [06:55]
Sonny Bunch
Yeah, yeah.
- [06:56]
Bill Kristol
The story of it's a Brendan who's a colleague of ours at the footwork, you know, he's very interested in this. He drives across the river and sees the Kennedy standard. He's very outraged by it. And so there have been rumors over the last week of when this stuff was going to come down. As you said, Sonny, it looked like they weren't going to fight it, and they were just going to go ahead and do on the building what they had done on the website and in the promotional materials and so forth. And so various people have seen things online. This could be the night they could do it. There were workmen seen around the Kennedy Center. I actually got a tip, whatever it's worth, two nights ago. This could be the night. It's getting very close to the deadline. They want to do it at the dead of night. Just Trump doesn't want anyone to see the name coming down. And so poor Brendan went out there and, and shoe leather reporting, got in his car right by the Kennedy center, waited there to see if they were doing it. This was, I guess, 36 hours ago, and they didn't do it. So I feel, I personally feel bad that I have deprived Brendan of his sleep and, and if his civilized sleeping accommodations. But he is doing. And now he's gone back out there today to see what's happening and maybe his phone is working. I don't know.
- [07:57]
Sonny Bunch
Do we have you, Brendan? No, no, still not. These young people, you know, none of their things work. Can we. Bill, let's, let's talk about Trump's priorities here, because they are kind of amazing. Like, we are in a shooting war with Iran right now, basically. You know, there's, there's missiles going back and forth, you know, on top of everything. Like, it's just, it's just wild to me that this is the thing that they are most, they Seem most focused on is, is, you know, the Kennedy center, the giant MMA ring on the lawn of the White House, you know, the, the ridiculous concert series. I like it. Just the, the priorities here, the reflecting pool, all that stuff. The priorities here seem out of whack.
- [08:46]
Bill Kristol
Yeah, well, he, I mean this is obviously Trump, Trump's narcissism and you know, megalomania have really kicked in in a such a big way. Not just in the second term in general, but I would say in the second year of the second term. Don't you think maybe since Venezuela, since he really was going to be. This is when he was going to be historic and maybe it was before Venezuela was. The Kennedy thing was actually I think October or something like that. But anyway, he's, it's the renaming the building the arch. The insane mixed martial arts event Sunday night in the White House. The war one hears about. I wrote about it this morning in morning shots and then I didn't even realize, for example, the weigh ins for these mixed martial arts fighters are going to be at the Lincoln Memorial. I mean the whole thing is so grotesque. But this is, I mean this is Donald Trump, right? It's like, let's just turn the White House, one of the right wing influencers who was invited yesterday morning to a little briefing at the White House is covered very well by the New York Times reporter was really just thrilled. This is like Vegas, he said, looking at this monster claw thing, you know, that they brought in from Europe. Incidentally, I thought aren't we sort of America first here? This thing was built. Are you aware of this? You probably knew this. You followed this stuff. I don't. This was built for a music fest rock festival in the Netherlands and it's been used a lot actually in, in Europe. I guess it's good for various. I don't even know for what. But this was like shipped over from Europe and all this and some of it's being paid for by the, the Fight, you know, organization.
- [10:11]
Sonny Bunch
Right, right.
- [10:11]
Bill Kristol
But, but there are huge, not huge, but substantial government taxpayer expenses here. Right. They're doing a lot of the stuff is actually it's a White House production and it is part of the 250th anniversary celebration, which is kind of dis. Grotesque. It's also of course Trump's 80th birthday, which for him I believe is more important probably than the 250th birthday of the Declaration.
- [10:31]
Sonny Bunch
Yeah, I think that's, I think that's a fair bet. The, no, the, the, the, the claw. The the whole. The whole MMA thing is so fascinating just because it is so. It is so grotesquely over the top, and it gives. It gives the Trumpy supporters a chance to be like, what, you don't like cool things? You don't like cool spectacle? Bill, why are you such a stick in the mud here? And then you look at it and you're like, this is the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen in my life. Why is this happening on the White House lawn? What are we doing here? What are we. What are we doing here with all
- [11:02]
Bill Kristol
this ridiculous nonsense and creating a genuine security? You know, it's not so easy. 4,500 people at the White House, they got, apparently the MFA, the mixed martial arts guys, the. What's the name of the organization? I'm blanking out.
- [11:15]
Sonny Bunch
There's a ufc. It's the. Yeah, yeah.
- [11:18]
Bill Kristol
Ultimate Fighting. Yeah. UFC guys are sort of in charge of the invites. But then, of course, the White House and Secret Service have to sign off on them. It's just been a total looks, you know, waste of money and of effort all around, and they're just. Yeah, and you're right. This is the. This is the focus of what they're. What they're doing. But. But for Trump, it's. Yeah, it's his. His birthday, and it's the 250th anniversary. And the idea that this is. I mean. And of course, no Republican, to my knowledge, has criticized it, actually.
- [11:46]
Sonny Bunch
Yeah, well, no, of course, you. You couldn't possibly criticize this. This would be a. You know, it would be a. Be a death penalty in the. You know, maybe John Cornyn can finally come out and say something like, this is really stupid. You know, now that he's found his bravery having been bounced from the. The Texas primary here. Here in Texas, I. You know, there. There is. There's just, like, an ongoing series of disasters at the Kennedy center, though. Like, just today, like, an hour ago, it was announced that the Washington National Opera is suing to force the Kennedy center to pay back, like, $17 million or some. Some insane amount of money that has not been paid over the years. You know, the fundraising was a disaster. I had a guy on who wrote a piece for the Atlantic a couple months back talking about the ridiculous fundraising strategies that they were doing there. Like, but it. But it does all. It does come back to, like, basic graft and, you know, sucking up to Donald. Like, they just want people to come say nice things to Donald Trump and give them money and then get a little bit of face time. And that is. That is not. That's no way to run an arts organization. Maybe, but it's certainly no way to run a country.
- [12:58]
Bill Kristol
Of course, they've unfortunately found so many people who.