Trump may have a lot of money, though for him and his greedy family it is never enough and they keep using the government to enrich themselves, but he is the textbook example of a parvenu, defined as “one that has recently or suddenly risen to an unaccustomed position of wealth or power and has not yet gained the prestige, dignity, or manner associated with it.” People who have what used to be called ‘old money’ grew up with a sense that it was gauche to talk about it and especially not flamboyantly flaunt it. It was a given that everyone knew you were wealthy and you were expected to demonstrate it discreetly in understated ways, by being philanthropic, cultured, and patronizing the arts, so that the ugly origins of your wealth was obscured. Trump is the opposite, using every opportunity to tell people how rich he is, and even exaggerating so it is no surprise that old money people despise him.

While his father made a lot of money in the construction business and gave Trump a start on his his own ventures, they were from the outer boroughs of New York City, and Trump was always aware that he was not of the Manhattan elite and felt that they looked down on him. You can see this in the way that he bristles at what he perceives as even the mildest slight, and rages and insults anyone whom he thinks does not respect him. That is not how old money behaves. They feel superior to others and thus can afford to be condescending towards those they consider their social inferiors, mostly ignoring them.

But Trump craves to be accepted by the old money elites and as part of that push he moved his construction business to Manhattan and put his name in gaudy gold lettering on a building there, no doubt seeing that as his entree to the old money elites. But those snobby elites tend to look down even further at those who try too hard to join their ranks and so Trump ended up consorting with other parvenus like the pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

But what clearly demonstrated his desperation to be considered one of the old money elites is what he did wth the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts that is housed in a massive luxurious building in the heart of Washington DC. (Incidentally, when searching online for the Kennedy Center, the first hit I got was to this parody site.)

Authorized by the National Cultural Center Act of 1958, which requires that its programming be sustained through private funds, the center represents a public–private partnership. Its activities include educational and outreach initiatives, almost entirely funded through ticket sales and gifts from individuals, corporations, and private foundations. The center receives annual federal funding to cover building maintenance and operations.

The Kennedys were emblematic of old money and, along with the Obamas (who were not old money but carried themselves with dignity and were at home with the cultural elites), were seen as among the most culturally sophisticated of presidential families. It is not for nothing that the White House was known as Camelot during the Kennedy presidency. Events at the Kennedy Center were attended by the glitterati .

So Trump must have seen the Kennedy Center as his entree into the elite world but as usual, he forced himself into it in his typical boorish manner, by firing its board, making himself president, and renaming it as the Trump Kennedy Center. He must felt that this would result in all the old money and cultural elites now flocking around him, making him the center of their world. But that backfired badly.

In 2025, President Donald Trump dismissed the center’s board of trustees and appointed new members, who elected him chairman and voted to add his name to the center, a move later determined to be illegal. Trump also announced in February 2026 that the center would close in July for two years of renovations, after declining ticket sales, canceled performances, and the Washington National Opera ending its half-century of residence.

When all major performers started pulling out, faced with the embarrassment of having just a few poorly attended events with second-tier artists, Trump suddenly decided that the building required major renovations and shut it down for two years, widely seen as a ruse.

But just this week he received another blow when a federal judge said that the Kennedy Center name could not be changed since it was created by an act of Congress, and further argued that it could not be closed either.

U.S. District Court Judge Christopher Cooper wrote in his ruling that: “The Kennedy Center’s organic statute makes crystal clear that the Center is to be named for President Kennedy, and it cannot bear any other formal name or public memorial based on the Board’s unilateral say-so. Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it.”
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As part of his ruling, Judge Cooper ordered that all signage and online materials referring to the “Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts,” the “Trump Kennedy Center,” or anything similar must be removed within 14 days.

The judge also blocked, for now, plans to close the Kennedy Center for two years of renovations.

Naturally Trump is ticked off and, like a petulant schoolboy who takes his ball and goes home because other students won’t make him their leader, seems to be considering shutting down the center altogether.

President Donald Trump on Saturday branded the federal judge who blocked his renovation of the Kennedy Center as “an anti Trump Hater” and predicted that the nation’s premier performing arts center he wanted to shutter for a two-year overhaul will “soon be closed, probably never to open again.”
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His post aimed to make the case for the project even as he says he’s giving up on it. Hours after Cooper’s decision, Trump said he was backing away from the renovations and making arrangements to relinquish control to Congress of what, until the Republican president’s second term, had been known as the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

Since his name is going to be removed from the building, he has lost interest in it altogether and may just try to delay its reopening. What surprises me is that Trump has not already sent a wrecking ball to break down part of the building, like he did with the East Wing of the White House.

This is not the only cultural event that is blowing up in Trump’s facer. His plans to have a series of concerts in June is in jeopardy because musical acts who had been announced as taking part withdrew, saying either that they had never been asked or had been misled into thinking that this was a non-partisan event, not a Trump one. So now he is ticked off about that and is vowing to cancel that too.

In another post on Saturday, Trump invoked the Kennedy Center episode as he addressed a spate of musicians backing out of a celebration for the country’s 250th anniversary.

“Cancel it,” Trump wrote, “just like I canceled my involvement with the failing and unsafe to be in Kennedy Center, because a Highly Conflicted, Crooked Federal Judge, said that I should not be allowed to spend my time and money in order to MAKE THE CENTER GREAT AGAIN.”

The man is flailing. Trump may like to think of himself as a king and have everything in gold but he is like the anti-King Midas, in that everything he touches turns to shit.

Jimmy Kimmel had fun with both these fiascos.