Why Is Trump Always Trying To Rename Something? [Op-Ed]

The Trump administration is the governmental embodiment of Sid from Toy Story. All it does is break things.

Actually, this administration ruins everything it claims to be fixing, then blames someone else for it being broken in the first place. Then it throws a tantrum when the federal adults in the room put it in time-out.

This is about the Kennedy Center.

Also, for some reason, it’s about Lake Ontario. But let’s start with the Kennedy Center.

According to USA Today, lawyers for the U.S. Department of Justice — which, over the past year and a half or so, has become the U.S. Department of Just-What-Ever-Floats-Trump’s-Bloat-I-Mean-Boat — argued in a court filing that without President Donald Trump’s support for renovating the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, including putting his name back on the building and grounds, the “decrepit, dilapidated, crumbling” venue “cannot be saved.”

Trump’s DOJ is threatening to break all the toys the president stole because a judge won’t let him write his name all over them.

From USA Today:

Congress has approved $257 million for the project. But government lawyers argued that without Trump’s additional fundraising aiming for more than $100 million, the work can’t be completed.

The lawyers said a board member fighting the placement of his name on the building, Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, should prefer that to having the building destroyed.

“The crisis is so acute that, without the Trump Administration, its people, and President Trump, the Center cannot survive, either structurally or financially,” government lawyers said in a filing Aug. 25. “The bottom line is this: Even Beatty should prefer a healthy, restored Center to a decaying hulk that is doomed to inevitable destruction or collapse.”

Ever since Trump’s hand-picked board at the Kennedy Center made him the institution’s chair, Trump has made unsubstantiated claims that the building is essentially dilapidated and in disarray. In March, the board voted to shut the center down for two years in order to make desperately needed “renovations.”

Again, whether it’s a reflecting pool, a ballroom, or an institution of art and culture that has stood tall for some 54 years, Trump and his administration break the things they’re claiming to fix and throw a tantrum when told that these things don’t belong to them.

Here’s the thing: even if it were true that the Kennedy Center was in such bad shape, which is widely disputed by people who have actually gone there, what does that have to do with Trump’s name being added to a building that was named for a deceased president, who was granted the honor after he was assassinated? And why try to restore it when what evidence actually shows is that the center’s association with Trump has done nothing but tank the institution’s ticket sales and cause a chorus line of musicians and other celebs to cancel their appearances?

In fact, confidential documents obtained by the Washington Post reportedly show ticket sales and fundraising collapsed after Trump replaced the center’s board with sycophants of his choosing, and those bought-and-paid-for butt sniffers voted to add his name to the building.

From the Post:

Ticket sales had already dropped in the10 months following Trump’s takeover, but both ticket sales and donations plunged after the Trump-led board of trustees voted in December to rename the center after him and put his name on the front of the building, according to the records.

The documents show that leaders knew both were cratering even as they publicly portrayed Trump’s takeover as a financial rescue. In a failed June request to keep Trump’s name on the building, for instance, a Justice Department lawyer wrote that renaming the center after Trump “represented a saving of The Kennedy Center which, if this doesn’t happen, would go into financial and structural collapse” — even suggesting in a new filing Monday that without Trump’s name and renovation plan, the building “will be required to be taken down.”

Just the week before the June filing, the center’s own financial projections showed ticket revenue and fundraising had plummeted after the name change, putting it on track to fall nearly $100 million short of its revenue target.

The records — internal budgets, management forecasts, board minutes and financial presentations — provide the first comprehensive accounting of the center’s financial deterioration in the year and a half since Trump replaced dozens of board members with allies and installed himself as chairman. Even after slashing expenses, center officials projected earned revenue this fiscal year to miss its budget target by 70 percent and contributed revenue to fall 25 percent short. The revenue miss was projected to leave the center with a $23 million deficit.

I’m sorry, I just need to grab my megaphone real quick…

ALL THIS PRESIDENT DOES IS BREAK THINGS!!!

And write his name all over shit.

And rename things arbitrarily — often to name them after himself.

Either that, or he’s naming them after America — which brings us back to Lake Ontario.

The president has, once again, started a trade war with Canada that U.S. consumers will certainly end up on the losing end of — with the price of goods continuing to rise as Trump continues to demonstrate that he doesn’t actually understand what tariffs do — and because Canada’s leadership has failed to bow down before the president’s weak, toothless, hollow-chested shows of MAGA force, Trump says he’s considering changing the name of Lake Ontario, which stretches across the U.S.-Canada border, to “Lake America,” just as he, in his mind at least, renamed the Gulf of Mexico, changing it to the “Gulf of America.”

“The United States is giving serious consideration to changing the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America in that we don’t expect to be doing much business with Ontario any longer,” Trump posted Tuesday. 

Anyway, Ontario Premier Doug Ford responded by telling Trump to “kiss my as.”

Did I mention that this is a president who only knows how to break things? Reflecting pools, ballrooms, arts centers, economies, international relationships — just all of the things.

Thanks, Sid. 

SEE ALSO:

Kennedy Center Board Votes To Shut Down For 2 Years. We All Know Why

Judge Denies Motion To Keep Trump’s Name On Kennedy Center