President Donald Trump's threats against the Kennedy Center show a distinct misunderstanding of how the institution actually works, one culture critic argued for MS NOW, as he seems unwilling or unable to treat it differently than one of his failed hotels.
Earlier this week, a federal judge, Christopher Cooper, ruled that the Kennedy Center board could not add Trump's name anywhere on the grounds of the arts center, in any form, firmly stalling the president's long-running scheme to make the famed building a monument to himself. Trump responded with a tirade on social media, dubiously claiming that the center was in dire condition, and might have to be bulldozed if his name is not added. He also sparked widespread alarm when a photographer caught him looking at a poster reading, "Kennedy Center Demolished," through a window on Air Force One, suggesting that plans to destroy the landmark are underway.
Rebecca Ritzel, a culture critic for various outlets based in Washington, D.C., published a new piece for MS NOW on Sunday analyzing the frenzied recent developments surrounding the Kennedy Center. Trump, she suggested, was approaching the venerated arts center with the same mindset as he would for one of his failing hotels.
"It may feel obvious to say, but the Kennedy Center is not the Trump Plaza Hotel, to name one business formerly owned by the president that did become a pile of rubble," Ritzel explained. "Both may be landmark waterfront edifices, one in Atlantic City, one in Washington, D.C. Both have been run by Trump. But one was a business that declared bankruptcy and one is a Congressionally charted nonprofit. If these buildings rack up debt, can’t handle some creaky plumbing and want to stop operating, they do so under an entirely different set of laws."
She added: "That’s a distinction the president of the United States, former owner of the Plaza Hotel chain and current chair of the Kennedy Center, does not appear to care to make."
The Kennedy Center, she explained further, is a non-profit chartered by Congress, meaning that it operates under fundamentally different rules than Trump's private businesses did, and its potential bankruptcy would differ from his plentiful experience with the process.
"For nonprofits, filing for Chapter 7 requires dissolving all assets in addition to going through bankruptcy proceedings," Ritzel wrote. "When a nonprofit 'dissolves,' laws prohibit the board and employees from making any money. The Kennedy Center couldn’t even keep its curtains. And dissolving a nonprofit that was chartered by Congress is entirely uncharted territory. Chapter 11 is on the table too, but that would not allow a court to discharge debts, and given the president’s claim that the Kennedy Center owes 'hundreds of millions of dollars,' it appears reorganizing would not help."
She added later: "Like several other 1990s businesses, the [Trump Plaza Hotel] retained Trump’s name even after the family reduced its ownership. Perhaps distant memory is why he thinks carving his name in stone is the only way to save the Kennedy Center. Here again, he does not appear to understand how corporate branding differs from nonprofit norms. When a nonprofit hangs a name on its brick-and-mortar space, it usually does so only after a long history of personal and family investment."
