Trump Crony Is Robbing the Kennedy Center to Pay Other Cronies, Senate Democrats Accuse
You know the president is attempting to politicize civil society when you have to read Playbill and OperaWire to keep up with the latest political news. Trump fired the entire board of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and replaced them with his cronies, and the new management is now accused of rampant corruption.
Here is Playbill’s overview:
A series of contracts and receipts obtained by the [Senate Environment and Public Works Committee] showed the Kennedy Center providing venue rentals to allies at a deep discount; spending almost $40,000 on luxury hotel rooms, lavish meals, and entertainment for friends over a period of three months; and providing work contracts to friends that were seemingly unrelated to Kennedy Center business….
The EPW documents also showed deeply discounted venue rentals to conservative organizations, including a $19,820 discount for a NewsNation town hall and a $21,982.60 discount to the American Conservative Union Foundation—the latter contract included a note of “waived costs from OOP” (the Office of the President).
In his letter, Whitehouse also detailed that Grenell provided a former colleague a $15,000-per-month contract to perform “policy research and speechwriting,” noting it’s “unclear how this work relates to your role at the Kennedy Center, since the contract is devoid of any detail, nor have you delivered any substantive speeches or remarks that would justify these payments.” The Center also entered into a $10,833.33 per month contract with Jeff Halperin, husband of conservative pundit Kari Lake, for “social media capture/editing” services.
One of the hallmarks of authoritarianism is that the takeover of institutions serves the purpose of exerting control, in this case artistic control—but at the same time, everything is also an opportunity for corruption, which also feeds the regime and its hangers-on.
The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.
© The UnPopulist, 2025
Follow us on Bluesky, Threads, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and X.