Kennedy Center teaches MAGA a tough lesson
Kennedy Center teaches MAGA a tough lesson
Donald Trump's coalition is finding that they can't bully their way into the nation's art and culture
By Amanda Marcotte
Senior Writer
Published February 4, 2026 6:45AM (EST)
(Salon) The myth that Donald Trump has a strategic vision took another hilarious blow on Sunday when het threw a tantrum familiar to anyone who has ever dealt with a diagnosable narcissist. Without apparently telling anyone who actually has to deal with it, the 79-year-old toddler president declared on Truth Social that he was shutting down the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for two years following its Fourth of July celebrations. This “decision” comes a mere six weeks after Trump pretended to be “surprised” and “honored” when the center’s board, which he leads, voted illegally to rename it the Trump-Kennedy Center, a name that no one seems interested in using, at least when out of Trump’s earshot.
The president claims the closure, which will likely last the rest of his term, is about “Construction, Revitalization, and Complete Rebuilding.” Few believe this. Most accept that it is an obvious reaction to the fact that a growing list of artists have cancelled shows at the Kennedy Center to avoid the taint of performing at a place where the word “Trump” was forced onto the building’s signage. The list of cancellations is so long that it has its own Wikipedia page, which features luminaries like Philip Glass, Béla Fleck, the Martha Graham Dance Company, the Washington National Opera and the entire cast of “Hamilton.”
The situation is a great example of how narcissists defeat themselves. As he’s done his whole life, Trump stole a trophy he didn’t earn in the hope that he would impress people. Instead, his grotesque behavior backfired and has drawn even more insults and rejections. But what’s even more fascinating is what this whole debacle tells us about the MAGA movement as a whole, and how Trump is the perfect symbol for their failed culture war aspirations.
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Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Center symbolizes the end game of this endless, pointless grievance: A hope that MAGA can take by force the cultural popularity that will never be offered freely. After his election in 2024, there was a short period of elation on the right as initial reports suggested movie and TV studios would be shuttering projects with racially diverse casts and CBS announced that liberal comedian Stephen Colbert’s late-night show was being canceled. Promises of more conservative-friendly programming were made. We also saw this in the immediate aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s killing, when MAGA tried to browbeat the public into pretending to like Kirk, with threats of doxxing and firing for people who refused to play along. ...................(more)
https://www.salon.com/2026/02/04/kennedy-center-teaches-maga-a-tough-lesson/
= new reply since forum marked as read
THIS is what Larry “End Game” Summers is talking’ about!
Global System ‘Rigged for the Wealthy’ Delivers World With ‘More Billionaires Than Ever’
New annual report on “ambitions” of billionaires by wealth management giant UBS shows just 2,919 individuals have a combined wealth of $15.8 trillion.
by John Queally
CommonDreams, December 5, 2025
A new assessment by the international wealth management giant UBS this week shows that the number of billionaires in the world has reached new heights and that the acceleration of inherited wealth represents a new chapter for the ultra-rich in the 21st Century.
The latest UBS Billionaire Ambitions Report, unveiled Thursday, details how just 2,919 individual billionaires have a combined wealth of $15.8 trillion. The number of billionaires in the world is up nearly 9 percent from the previous year. In the United States—where nearly a third of those on the list reside—924 billionaires hold a collective $6.9 trillion in wealth.
The assessment by UBS—which surveyed its own billionaire clients as part of the survey, now its eleventh edition—emphasizes a surge of inherited wealth among the billionaire class. According to the report:
In 2025, 91 heirs (64 of them male and 27 female) inherited a record USD 297.8 billion. That’s 36% more than in 2024, despite fewer people inheriting overall. Globally, inheritance bolstered the number of multigenerational billionaires, with some 860 multi-generational billionaires now overseeing total assets of USD 4.7 trillion. That’s up from 805 with USD 4.2 trillion in 2024.
Across the world, multi-generational billionaires are slowly extending down the generations, with the number of second-generation billionaires growing by 4.6% in the 2025 report, the number of third generation by 12.3%, and the number of fourth generation and beyond by 10%.
Continues…
https://www.commondreams.org/news/ubs-billionaires-report
George Carlin: “It’s a rich man’s club and we aren’t in it.”
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/964648-but-there-s-a-reason-there-s-a-reason-there-s-a-reason
He's 91 and lives in Florida. Perfect choice for emcee 
