Donald Trump’s latest act of self-immortalization has crossed into something closer to parody. After Trump abruptly slapped his name on the Kennedy Center, John F. Kennedy’s niece, Maria Shriver, stepped in to call out the vandalism.
On Thursday, Dec. 18, the board of trustees of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts voted to rename the institution after Trump. It’s now called the “Donald J. Trump and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.” Or, the Trump Kennedy Center, in short. Yes, “Trump” before Kennedy.
The White House announced the decision triumphantly, branding it a moment of renewal and “unanimous” agreement. However, not everyone was clapping. Maria Shriver, journalist, author, and niece of John F. Kennedy, responded with a blistering rebuke of the decision.
In a statement posted to X and Instagram, Shriver reminded the public what the Kennedy Center actually represents. “The Kennedy Center was named after my uncle, President John F. Kennedy,” she wrote. “It was named in his honor. He was a man who was interested in the arts, interested in culture, interested in education, language, and history.”
Maria Shriver calls Trump’s name added before Kennedy’s unacceptable
Shriver emphasized JFK and Jacqueline Kennedy’s role in elevating the arts and bringing artists into the White House. She stressed how JFK treated culture as a civic good, not a branding opportunity. And understanding that matters, because Trump’s renaming isn’t additive to that legacy. So, Shriver bluntly called the renaming unacceptable:
“It is beyond comprehension that this sitting president has sought to rename this great memorial dedicated to President Kennedy. It is beyond wild that he would think adding his name in front of President Kennedy’s name is acceptable. It is not.”
Her argument wasn’t simply a sentimental nostalgia; it was meant to expose the ridiculousness of the renaming. The Kennedy Center is a memorial created by Congress and dedicated to a president with a substantive and intentional relationship with the arts. Trump inserting himself into that lineage is thus nothing but an erroneous overwrite.
The Kennedy Center isn’t Trump’s first victim, and it won’t be the last
After expressing her disagreement with the renaming, Shriver followed the logic to its uncomfortable implication:
Next thing, perhaps, he will want to rename JFK Airport, rename the Lincoln Memorial, the Trump Lincoln Memorial. The Trump Jefferson Memorial. The Trump Smithsonian. The list goes on.
That might sound like exaggeration, but it all fits neatly into Trump’s pattern of ego-grabbing stunts. Just recently, he also renamed the United States Institute of Peace after himself. Clearly, his relationship with power is possessive. If it honors someone else, it must include him. Shriver called for Americans to “wake up” to this reality, writing:
Can we not see what is happening here? C’mon, my fellow Americans! Wake up! This is not dignified. This is not funny. This is way beneath the stature of the job. It’s downright weird. It’s obsessive in a weird way. Just when you think someone can’t stoop any lower, down they go…
Those lines stripped the moment of its false grandeur and exposed the hollowness of the renaming in a blink. It doesn’t have a policy rationale, cultural argument, or public need being met with that. It’s just for the whims of a man-child who cannot tolerate a nationally revered institution existing without his name bolted onto it.
Published: Dec 19, 2025 02:18 pm