Editorial: Small man's big ego: Adding Trump's name to the Kennedy Center only shows his weakness and shallowness

New York Daily News Editorial Board, New York Daily News on Dec 22, 2025

Published in Op Eds

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Affixing Donald Trump’s name to the Kennedy Center (rebranded as The Donald J. Trump and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts) is the pathetically needy move of an insecure leader and is just the latest affront to common decency and good taste stemming from that man in the White House.

Never mind that the move by Trump-appointed stooges on the Kennedy Center board has no bearing in law, which would require an act of Congress to alter the name of the D.C. music, dance and theater complex, which is the formal memorial to the slain Jack Kennedy.

Saying a name has changed isn’t the same as really changing a name, like Trump did with the Department of Defense, to be known as the Department of War or the Gulf of Mexico to be the Gulf of America.

Adding his own gold-plated moniker to the Kennedy Center is in line with his renaming the U.S. Institute of Peace as the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace and slapping his name on the HQs building in D.C., which is an odd one, as Trump wanted to shut down the Institute of Peace.

As we approach his first year since he returned to power, Trump is very active in putting his mark everywhere he can, like his tacky “Presidential Walk of Fame” in the White House’s West Colonnade, with portraits of all the presidents in gold frames.

There is insulting, ahistorical and pro-Trump nonsense written in the plaques beneath the portraits of all the men who served, going back to George Washington. Well, almost all. Instead of Joe Biden’s likeness, Trump hung up a gold framed photo of an autopen. Funny, if you are in grade school.

Said his press secretary of the plaques, “As a student of history, many were written directly by the president himself.” Trump clearly failed history as a student.

Barack Obama is called “a community organizer, one term Senator from Illinois, and one of the most divisive political figures in American History.”

Under Bill Clinton’s portrait it concludes: “In 2016, President Clinton’s wife, Hillary, lost the Presidency to President Donald J. Trump!”

But at least Trump has not yet torn down the West Wing. On the other side of the White House is his demolition of the entire East Wing for a gaudy ball room (what other kind of ball room would Trump have?)

Trump has been tearing down norms and laws and customs and traditions since last Jan. 20, why not historical structures as well? Trump only cares about Trump, not public service, not the Constitution, not the people, which is something that his allies always fail to understand. Being loyal to Trump will get you nothing; to Trump, everyone is disposable, yet there is a steady stream of new allies lining up to try to please him.

A lifelong con man, Trump knows that there always will be a new sucker, there’s one born every minute.

As for what else he can mess with, Trump still has three years and one month remaining. Don’t be surprised should he try to add his own bust to Mount Rushmore or put Dishonest Don in a chair in the Lincoln Memorial next to Honest Abe.

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