Outrage as Trump aides move to put his name back on Kennedy Center after court said no
The Kennedy Center board is moving once again to put President Donald Trump's name on the side of the performing arts center — defying court orders.
The Trump-loyal board voted Thursday to inscribe "Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump" beneath the venue's main signage — a workaround to a federal law banning new memorials or plaques at the center, The New York Times reported. The move came shortly after the board also voted to move forward with shuttering the main building for two years of renovations, a plan Trump first floated in February, calling the historic venue "tired, broken and dilapidated."
"The center desires to recognize and honor President Trump's existential and unprecedented contributions to the survival of the center by all legal means," the resolution states.
Both moves now face fresh scrutiny from U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper, who already blocked an earlier closure attempt after finding the board's original vote "ill-informed and seemingly preordained." Cooper previously ruled that only Congress has the authority to rename the institution, forcing the center to remove Trump's name from the building in June, though it's currently appealing that decision.
The new purported loophole to put Trump's name back on the building earned a swift reaction from political observers on social media.
"Insanity," wrote former CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta.
"My word: just think about how low his self-esteem is that he needs this so badly?" wrote former "Meet the Press" host Chuck Todd. "Most human beings would have felt the shame of all this. I know this isn’t a new take. But it doesn’t make it any less sad or pathetic."
Trump nears the one mistake that ‘would be the end’ of his presidency: expert
A foreign policy expert warned on Monday that President Donald Trump is inching closer to making the one mistake that would end his presidency.
Over the last week, reports indicate that conditions for U.S. sailors on the USS Abraham Lincoln, which has been at sea for more than nine months, have become so bad that at least one sailor has jumped overboard. The reports have raised significant questions about troop morale at a time when Trump and his advisers seem to be contemplating launching a ground offensive in Iran as negotiations have stalled, David Rothkopf, global affairs columnist for The Daily Beast and an international trade official during the Clinton administration, said during a new episode of "The Daily Beast Podcast."
Rothkopf warned that if Trump ordered that ground offensive, it would likely spell the end of his presidency.
“This war is illegal. It has been mishandled. It has been bungled. It is going terribly," Rothkopf declared. "And if Donald Trump were to get on TV tomorrow night and say, ‘I believe that we should put troops on the ground and we will lose thousands of Americans,’ the country would go wild."
“No Republicans would win in November," he added. "It would be the end, and he knows it. He knows he’s got no wiggle room here.”
