President Donald Trump famously likes to put his name on things he builds as monuments to himself. It might be conceited, vain and unseemly, but that is his right.

What he doesn’t have the right to do is permanently plaster his name on the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts. To do so would not just be unlawful. It would be a disgrace.

In a narrow legal sense, Trump’s attempt to foist his name on the Kennedy Center broke the law, a federal judge has ruled, because Congress named the center in honor of the slain president, and only Congress can change the name.

However, there are much more substantive reasons to keep Trump’s name off. John F. Kennedy stood for patriotism, moral leadership of the Free World, an America proudly open to immigrants, and a country that embraces civil rights for all. It is hard to think of a president more diametrically opposed to Kennedy’s values than Donald J. Trump.

JFK was famously patriotic. He enlisted in the military before the bombing of Pearl Harbor. In August 1943, when the PT-109 boat he was commanding was rammed by a Japanese destroyer, JFK helped most of the crew survive by making their way to a nearby island. He disliked braggarts, and when praised for his heroism on the PT-109, he said, “It was involuntary. They sank my boat.”

At his presidential inauguration, Kennedy inspired a generation to public service with his challenge: “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”

By contrast, Trump is arguably the least patriotic president in American history. Not only did he take advantage of five draft deferments to avoid military service, but Trump derided military hero John McCain’s service and reportedly called military veterans and fallen soldiers “suckers.” His most unpatriotic act came on January 6, 2021, when he became the first outgoing president to resist the peaceful transfer of power. In his second term in office, he put himself ahead of his country and enriched himself by more than $2 billion. Even the vanity project of putting his name on the Kennedy Center is all about advancing himself, not America.

In foreign affairs, JFK was a bold internationalist who relished his role as leader of the Free World. He established the Peace Corps to support progress in developing nations and spread liberal, democratic values. He believed in international cooperation and established the Alliance for Progress in Latin America. He was a liberal Cold Warrior, clear-eyed about the Soviet menace.

Trump is in many ways JFK’s opposite — a proponent of “America First,” who shuttered the U.S. Agency for International Development, started trade wars with allies, criticized NATO, and buddied up with dictators. He has said Chinese authoritarian president Xi Jinping is a “very, very good man.” Trump called Russia’s dictator Vladimir Putin “a leader. Far more than our president (Barack Obama) is a leader.” He said he “fell in love” with North Korean tyrant Kim Jong Un.

John F. Kennedy championed immigration. In 1958, he wrote a short book, titled “A Nation of Immigrants,” outlining the contribution of immigrants to America. He was for legal immigration that didn’t discriminate by nationality. Trump’s signature issue has been opposition not only to unlawful immigration but also legal immigration from struggling nations. Why, he asked, should America be welcoming to immigrants coming to us legally from what he called “s-hole countries.”

On civil rights, JFK fought segregationists, and in 1963, after a confrontation with Alabama Gov. George Wallace, JFK addressed the country on the question. He argued the nation was “confronted primarily with a moral issue” that “is as old as the scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution.” He also announced that he would send civil rights legislation to Congress the following week.

Trump has time and again set back the cause of civil rights that JFK championed. He has dined with white nationalist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes, said a Mexican American judge was biased by nature of his ancestry, and called some of those who marched with White supremacists in Charlottesville, Va., “very fine people.”

Putting Donald Trump’s name on the Kennedy Center would be like putting a Confederate statue in the Lincoln Memorial.

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ABOUT THE WRITER

Richard D. Kahlenberg is the director of the American Identity Project at the Progressive Policy Institute and co-author (with Ruy Teixeira) of “Bobby Kennedy, Liberal Patriot.” He wrote this for InsideSources.com.

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