(The Hill) – A House Republican’s bill would strip former President Kennedy’s name from the Washington institution created in the 35th commander in chief’s honor and instead have it known as the “Trump Center for the Performing Arts.”
The bill, recently introduced by Rep. Bob Onder (R-Mo.), aims to “designate the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts as the ‘Donald J. Trump Center for the Performing Arts.'”
Representatives for Onder and the Kennedy Center didn’t immediately return a request for comment about the proposed name change.
In an earlier statement, Onder called Trump “a patron of the arts and a staple of the pop-culture landscape.”
Dubbing the bill the Make Entertainment Great Again (MEGA) Act, a play on Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again,” Onder said, “I cannot think of a more ubiquitous symbol of American exceptionalism in the arts, entertainment, and popular culture at large than President Trump.”
House Republicans on the Appropriations Committee approved an amendment earlier this month to the interior, environment and related agencies annual spending bill that would rename a space inside the Kennedy Center the prominent Washington arts hub’s famed opera house the “First Lady Melania Trump Opera House.”
Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) called the potential opera house designation an “excellent way to recognize [Melania Trump’s] support and commitment to promoting the arts.”
The opera house amendment was met with fierce condemnation from Trump critics, including Jack Schlossberg, Kennedy’s 32-year-old grandson.
“A nation reveals itself not only by the men it produces but also by the men it honors, the men it remembers,” Schlossberg wrote in a social media post.
“The Trump administration stands for freedom of oppression, not expression,” Schlossberg said.
Trump, in an unprecedented move, overhauled the Kennedy Center’s board and named himself its chair in February, accusing it of being too “woke.”
After touring the Kennedy Center in March, Trump said it was in a state of “tremendous disrepair.”
“We’re going to fix it up, but it’s really emblematic of our country,” Trump said at the time.
The Kennedy Center opened its doors to the public in 1971. It describes its namesake Kennedy on its website as a “lifelong supporter and advocate of the arts” who “frequently steered the public discourse toward what he called ‘our contribution to the human spirit.'”
According to the institution, two months after Kennedy’s 1963 assassination, “Congress passed and President Johnson signed into law legislation renaming the National Cultural Center… as a ‘living memorial’ to Kennedy.”
