Donald Trump could never sing “Don’t Rain On My Parade,” get a Duck Sauce song named after him, or inspire Rachel Berry—but I bet Barbra Streisand could be president if she wanted to… without suppressing a bunch of votes in the process.
On Thursday, Streisand classily dunked on Trump’s embarrassing obsession with getting his name on the Kennedy Center, sharing a statement on her personal website. “The Kennedy Center was meant to pay tribute to a beloved president, and to advance his philosophy that artistic achievement was proof of a free society. He believed that when the creative impulse cannot flourish freely, a society loses its vitality.”
Streisand’s statement follows Trump’s threat to tear down the center entirely if his name doesn’t appear on it, which was countered with an order from a federal judge stating that 30 days notice are required to legally demolish the building.
The center was originally renamed in 1963, making the National Cultural Center into the Kennedy Center of the Performing Arts, as a living memorial to JFK Jr. after he’d been assassinated. JFK was a champion of the arts and a believer that a country’s investment in (and celebration of) creativity was directly correlated with its commitment to freedom. But since last year, Trump’s been trying to slap his own name on the institution—a move that’s been repeatedly blocked by several judges.
The idiocy of Trump trying to force his name onto a monument to democracy has not been lost on Babs. In her statement, she points out how the Trump Kennedy Center is closed for “renovation,” and that there weren’t any conversations about it. The words come a few days after a photographer snapped a shot of Trump looking at a poster on Air Force One on Wednesday, which appeared to say “Kennedy Center DEMOLISHED.”
For his part, Trump seems to have taken the mature approach of “if I can’t have it, no one can”, going so far as to put a literal tarp over the facade (presumably in a nod to the equally mature “if I can’t see it, it doesn’t exist”).
