Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio) said Tuesday that she and President Trump exchanged sharp words during a Kennedy Center board meeting, with the president resorting to personal attacks after she opposed shuttering the institution's main building.
In an interview with NewsNation's Joe Khalil, Beatty, an ex-officio board member, described how Trump, who chairs the board, reacted to her objection. "He found it necessary to go into what he does — name calling," she said. "He has a limited vocabulary, so, you know, he knows words like dumb, you know, and things like that. I was surprised that the board people let it go on. So, we had some exchange of words."
When pressed on her own response, Beatty said Trump told her he thought she was incompetent, and she shot back, "I know you're incompetent." The exchange underscores the escalating political friction over the future of the Kennedy Center, a storied cultural institution now at the center of a Trump-driven overhaul.
The board's decision to immediately close the main building for renovations came during the same meeting, according to a source familiar with the situation. Board members have argued that only Trump has the fundraising muscle to rescue the financially troubled center. That move, however, is tangled in legal challenges, including a federal judge's ruling Tuesday that blocked the board from inscribing Trump's name on the building or renaming the campus after him.
U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper found that the board, now stacked with Trump loyalists, lacked congressional approval for the renaming and that a prior vote likely violated his earlier injunction. Beatty is leading a lawsuit against the renaming effort, which she and other Democrats have decried as a partisan power grab.
The Trump administration fired back. White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said in a statement that "for decades, Democrats let the Kennedy Center rot as water damage spread, infrastructure crumbled, and a national treasure fell apart under their watch." Ingle added that "President Trump stepped up to save it, and Trump-deranged Dumocrats like Joyce Beatty oppose anything that celebrates the greatness of our country because they put America Last."
The clash comes as the board's vote to close the main building raises questions about the center's future programming and public access. Meanwhile, the judge's ruling on the naming adds another layer of uncertainty to Trump's ambitious renovation plans.
Beatty's confrontation with Trump is the latest in a series of partisan battles over cultural institutions, with Republicans accusing Democrats of neglect and Democrats accusing Trump of politicizing the arts. The Ohio congresswoman's blunt assessment of the president's vocabulary and competence is likely to fuel further debate in Washington.
As the legal and political wrangling continues, the Kennedy Center's iconic building remains closed, its marquee dark, and its fate increasingly tied to the whims of the White House and the courts.
