Lee Greenwood, a country music singer who was reappointed to the Kennedy Center board in February, and who was previously chosen as a trustee during Trump’s first term, isn’t worried about the early turbulence. Trump wants to bring the Kennedy Center “to its former beauty,” said the singer, whose hit “God Bless the USA” has long been a staple of Trump’s rallies. “I totally agree with it.” When I asked what sort of shows the new Kennedy leadership might feel are underrepresented, Greenwood said that he didn’t want to get political. Programming decisions, he expected, would not be made by Trump; they are based on entertainment and business value. “If they have a bunch of dancers that are gay or not gay,” that’s “not going to be an issue,” he said.
When discussing his plans for the Kennedy Center, Trump frequently stumbles into a version of his political message by invoking a bygone era of mass entertainment that wasn’t tainted by politics. American Culture can be made Great Again—as long as it is forbidden from engaging with the world around it. On the one hand, this is a very old vision: Demagogues have attempted to use bread and circuses to satiate the masses for millennia. But it’s also apparent that, beyond the Kennedy Center and the NEA, there is a clear desire to showcase art with a distinctly Trumpian spin—even if no one seems entirely sure of what that would look like in practice.
It’s fitting that Trump’s primary artistic interest seems to be portraits of himself. In March, he criticized a commissioned oil painting in the Colorado state Capitol as “purposefully distorted,” but was reportedly “touched” by a more flattering portrait gifted to him by Russian President Vladimir Putin. He and his allies have recently shared images of dubious artistic origin depicting himself in a number of flattering guises: as a star NFL player, as Rambo, even as a king.