Trump halts Kennedy Center tours to hide his destruction - Daily Kos

Earlier this week, a Kennedy Center tour guide spoke to The New York Times about how she still kept showing up every Monday to conduct tours, but knew one day she might just arrive to locked doors.  It only took until Thursday for that to come true, when the director of the volunteer program for the Kennedy Center said it was putting a “temporary pause” on tours of the center that Trump is still fighting in court to take over. A memo was sent to all the volunteers who have doggedly, lovingly, kept showing up telling them not to bother “until further notice.” Yes, if President Donald Trump can’t wreck the Kennedy Center itself, he’s going to wreck everyone else’s access to it and joy in it. Tours at the center have gone on continuously since 1971, save for one year during COVID, with 140 volunteers giving tours in 10 different languages for up to 400,000 visitors per year. But no longer. All the administration will say is that “We are conducting a review of campuswide tour routes to ensure they provide the best possible experience for our visitors.”  Honestly, this couldn’t look worse for the administration, even by the horrible standards of this administration. The tour guide at the heart of Monday’s New York Times story is perhaps the most delightful person imaginable. Sandy Weiswasser is a retired 6th-grade teacher who has given hundreds of tours in the last 18 years and is 87 years old, the daughter of Polish immigrants whose grandmother was presumed to have died in a Nazi concentration camp. Her love of the Kennedy Center comes through in every word of the Times story. Weiswasser continued to give tours to ever-dwindling numbers, but her cardinal sin was sharing that she did so to show what the Kennedy Center once was—a vibrant, beautiful democratization of the arts, not the empty husk Trump made it. But the tour she gave to the Times reporter couldn’t cover up that the administration has simply let the center slide into disuse, the orchestra pit scattered with trash, artwork torn from the walls.  Related | Trump’s DOJ sinks to pathetic new lows in Kennedy Center imbroglio The administration still even refuses to take down the tarp covering where Trump’s name was removed. In June, the judge who ruled Trump’s name had to come down issued an order requiring the Department of Justice attorneys to explain why the thing is still up.  The official story is that it is so workers can repair the facade, but it isn’t really clear why a tarp would need to stay up for those repairs. It’s painfully obvious the tarp is staying up because Trump is angry his name was removed, and he doesn’t want anyone to be able to see it. The judge just gave the administration an extension until late August to explain the tarp, after Trump’s handpicked board of sycophants meets to discuss future construction and operation plans for the center.  Trump has already made pretty clear that if he can’t have the Kennedy Center, no one can: “Unless I am free to do what I do better than anyone else, bring this Institution back, physically, financially, and artistically, I have no interest in continuing what could only be a hopeless journey into ‘NEVER NEVER LAND.’” Yeah, we already know what Trump does “better than anyone else,” and it isn’t good. The work that Trump jammed through before the court paused his spree of destruction was rushed and shoddy because Trump wanted it done for his pathetic Kennedy Center honors and FIFA Peace Prize ceremony.  Painters didn’t use the primer that an existing contract called for when they repainted exterior columns, instead using a cheaper primer that will now require repainting, at a cost of about $1.8 million, because rust from the columns is showing through. They slapped a new floor in the concert hall that didn’t account for the acoustical requirements, kind of a big thing in a performing arts center. They also resanded and repainted the center’s reflecting pool, but did it shabbily enough that the paint is already peeling and the pool is rusting.  Quite a feat to massively screw up not one, but two reflecting pools, right? It’s going to feel so good to wrench this jewel in Washington, D.C.’s crown back from this tasteless wrecker and his feckless toadies. If there’s any justice, Weiswasser should be the first person to take us all through those doors someday soon.