When President Donald Trump announced a takeover of the Kennedy Center last year, he explained it was to combat a specific sort of political and cultural rot. "We don't need woke at the Kennedy Center," he said in February 2025 aboard Air Force One. "Some of the shows were terrible. They were a disgrace that they were even put on. So I'll be there until such time as it gets to be running right."
Or did he mean running Right? The president's recent reversal, in response to a federal judge's ruling that the Kennedy Center had been illegally renamed after Trump, provides an instructive window into the answer.
