In my opinion, this is Steve Schmidt’s best essay ever.
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“Donald Trump tried to put his name on the Kennedy Center.
Pause for a moment and contemplate the obscenity of that sentence.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy represented youth, sacrifice, intellect, courage and service to country. He was a war hero whose PT boat was cut in half in the black waters of the Pacific Ocean by a Japanese destroyer during a world war fought against fascism and tyranny.
Donald Trump is a draft-dodging vulgarian who insults dead American soldiers, mocks prisoners of war, sneers at Gold Star families, and turns every sacred institution he touches into a cheap casino covered in gold paint and self-worship.
Of course he wanted to rename the Kennedy Center after himself.
There’s no limit to the narcissism of a man who believes the American presidency is a vehicle for personal glorification instead of constitutional duty.
The Kennedy Center isn’t merely a building. It’s a memorial to a vision of America that understood that culture and democracy are intertwined.
John Kennedy believed the arts mattered because civilization mattered.
He understood something Trump never will: that great nations aren’t measured only by military power or economic output, but by the depth of their culture, the vitality of their imagination, and the confidence they place in free expression.
Kennedy admired poets. Trump admires sycophants.
Kennedy invited Pablo Casals to perform at the White House after the great cellist had refused to play there for presidents he believed tolerated fascism in Spain. Kennedy understood the symbolism of art in a democracy.
You can listen to the magnificent performance here:
Trump stages UFC fights on the South Lawn.
Kennedy spoke about Robert Frost as a national treasure, and declared at Amherst College shortly before his death:
When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man’s concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence.
Meditate on that sentence for a moment.
“When power leads man toward arrogance…”
Could there be a more precise description of Donald Trump?
Kennedy understood that artists, writers, musicians and poets weren’t decorative figures orbiting power. They were essential critics of it. They were guardians against the corruption of the soul.
Trump sees culture differently.
He sees it as branding.
As loyalty theater.
As spectacle.
As another surface upon which to stamp his name.
Everything in his life is transactional because he lacks the capacity to feel reverence. There’s no awe in him. No humility. No sense of inheritance. No understanding that some things belong to history, and not to him.
This is the central truth about Donald Trump: he can’t distinguish between the United States of America and himself.
That’s the essence of authoritarianism.
The dictator, the strongman, the king — they all arrive at the same conclusion eventually: “I am the state.”
Trump’s desecration of the White House grounds with his vulgar ballroom project isn’t enough. His conversion of the South Lawn into a UFC spectacle isn’t enough. His endless monetization of the presidency isn’t enough because, in Trump’s mind, nothing in America can remain outside his shadow.
Not the military.
Not the courts.
Not the universities.
Not the Department of Justice.
Not the arts.
Not even the memory of John F. Kennedy.
What happened next, however, matters enormously.
A federal judge stopped him.
For one fleeting moment, the Constitution still functioned.
A judge somewhere in America looked at this absurd act of vanity and effectively said: “No. You aren’t king. You don’t own the country. You don’t inherit the monuments of dead presidents like a feudal lord seizing castles.”
The humiliation enraged him because humiliation is intolerable to weak men who survive on domination and spectacle.
Trump then threatened to abandon the Kennedy Center entirely.
That’s why authoritarians always attack artists eventually.
The Nazis called modern art “degenerate.”
The Soviets demanded “socialist realism.”
Mao unleashed the Cultural Revolution against intellectuals and artists.
Every authoritarian movement fears independent culture because culture teaches people how to think, how to question, and how to imagine a different world.
Trump doesn’t understand art because art requires empathy. It requires curiosity about other people. It requires emotional depth and introspection. These are alien concepts to a man whose inner life appears to consist entirely of appetite, grievance and ego maintenance.
He’s America’s most celebrated hollow man.
A void wrapped in makeup, hairspray and malignant narcissism.
And yet the greater scandal may not be Trump’s behavior.
It’s the silence.
Where are the Republicans who claim to revere Kennedy’s anti-communism, patriotism and love of country?
Where are the conservatives who once claimed to defend culture, history and American institutions?
Where are the elected officials willing to say the obvious — that this is grotesque, embarrassing, and un-American?
The answer, of course, is that they’re afraid.
They’re afraid of the mob they created.
Afraid of the base they radicalized.
Afraid of the social media lynching.
Afraid of the next primary.
Afraid of the man.
So they say nothing, while Trump marches through American history with a can of gasoline and a blowtorch.
Every institution becomes smaller after he touches it.
More degraded.
More vulgar.
More cynical.
More broken.
That’s his legacy.
Donald Trump isn’t building anything lasting in America. He’s consuming it.
Like all arsonists, he mistakes destruction for strength.
But the American story doesn’t belong to Donald Trump.
The White House doesn’t belong to Donald Trump.
The Kennedy Center doesn’t belong to Donald Trump.
The country doesn’t belong to Donald Trump.
And one day, long after this bloated and corrupt old man is gone, the shame of this era will linger over everyone who watched this spectacle and decided silence was safer than courage.
History is recording names now.
Every one of them.”
— Substack, May 31, 2026.
