A planned Christmas Eve jazz concert at the Kennedy Center, a holiday tradition dating back more than 20 years, has been canceled. The show’s host, musician Chuck Redd, says that he called off the performance in the wake of the White House announcing last week that Donald Trump’s name would be added to the facility.
As of last Friday, the building’s facade reads The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts. According to the White House, the president’s handpicked board approved the decision, which scholars have said violates the law. Trump had been suggesting for months he was open to changing the center’s name.
“When I saw the name change on the Kennedy Center website and then hours later on the building, I chose to cancel our concert,” Redd told The Associated Press in an email Wednesday. Redd, a drummer and vibraphone player who has toured with everyone from Dizzy Gillespie to Ray Brown, has been presiding over holiday “Jazz Jams” at the Kennedy Center since 2006, succeeding bassist William “Keter” Betts.
The law explicitly prohibits the board of trustees from making the center into a memorial to anyone else, and from putting another person’s name on the building’s exterior.
Then the board have broken the law and should be prosecuted.
Even his handpicked board didn’t all go along with it. One of them is suing over this, and said their mic was muted so that there couldn’t be any objections.
Pretty sure they’ve violated their fiduciary duty
The only thing that should be named after Trump is a maximum security prison that houses every scumbag in this administration along with their accomplices.
Or a toxic waste dump
Hey… Don’t limit your creativity.
We could name a few flesh eating parasites and leech species after him too
What did they do to deserve that?
The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts
Can the “memorial” part of this at least come true already?
Don’t you have to be dead to have a building named in memorial to you?
Sounds like a neat concert. Hadn’t heard of it before. Love me some jazz! Fuck Trump.
