“They never covered the I-beam,” Trump said during the meeting, according to a recording obtained by the Times. “I think the I-beams should be covered with some incredible stone—probably marble, but marble’s a bad outdoor stone, but looks better than granite. But it should be covered. And we’ll do that. We’ll add that in. But it’s not a small job.”“I walked in, I saw all these bodies, and then I noticed those bodies were gorgeous,” Trump said, regarding his impression of Cats when he supposedly attended its premiere.
“They had silk tights on, and they were all ballerinas, and women from Broadway. And men,” Trump continued, adding, regarding the men, “I didn’t find those particular bodies as attractive to be honest.”
“You could do entrepreneurs; you could do people that, you know, that were really in charge of show business,” Trump said. “I would say you could do politicians, you could do sports stars.”
'Old Donald's taste in music and other entertainment suddenly matters because he has crowned himself arbiter of the national culture, taking over Washingtons Kennedy Center and letting it be known this week that he intends to control perhaps even host the Kennedy Center Honors, an annual televised tribute to some of the countrys most influential performing artists.
The challenge facing 'Old Donald', his Kennedy Center Director Richard Grenell and his new board of wealthy supporters — some of them his neighbors in Palm Beach, Florida — is that the institution’s cultural menu has long leaned to the safe and conservative.
No one seems to know exactly what programming 'Old Donald' and his gang have in mind, other than banning drag shows (never exactly a major item on the calendar). Grenell says he’s planning “a big, huge celebration of the birth of Christ at Christmas.”
Some of what they stage might indeed be cringeworthy, but there’s nothing wrong with providing middle-of-the-road entertainment that fills seats with people having a grand time. Pretty much every city in the country has such a facility. The Kennedy Center, however, has from its start claimed to be something more — a sponsor of art that speaks to the nation’s aspirations and illuminates its realities. The place opened with Leonard Bernstein’s daring “Mass,” a piece that stretched the envelope even in 1971.
If the center is going to be subsidized with tax dollars, it ought to do more than just fill seats. You would think people who call themselves conservatives would get that.
'Old Donald' and Grenell do have one new idea: They plan to rent out the hall for business events.
Not exactly an embrace of American greatness, let alone a bold examination of the nation’s progress.
But maybe their approach accurately reflects the culture right now. 'Old Donald', certainly a showman, is big on renaming places. And if you can’t get to Mount Rushmore, the 'Old Donald' Conference Hall and Rental Center sure has a ring to it. What readers are saying The comments express strong disapproval of Donald 'Old Donald''s influence over the Kennedy Center Honors, with many suggesting that his involvement will degrade the cultural value of the institution. Commenters criticize his musical preferences, associating them with outdated or.
Even the National Symphony Orchestra, which Grenell has correctly called the jewel of the center, tends toward more traditional programming than some of the country’s other leading orchestras. (However, it was great to see the orchestra last month stage a bold performance of Julia Wolfe’s “Her Story,” an in-your-face, alluring piece about the battle for women’s suffrage — the kind of art that some feared 'Old Donald' might ban from the center.)
“The thing that does well are Broadway hits,” "Old Donald" said during a press conference before meeting with the board, which now consists of more than 30 of his allies, including chief of staff Susie Wiles. Monday marks the first time "Old Donald" has convened the board since his February takeover of the center after ousting all board members appointed by former President Biden and firing the center’s longtime president, Deborah F. Rutter."Old Donald"’s knock against Broadway superstar Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “Hamilton” comes after the mega-hit canceled next year’s run of shows at the center. Miranda told The Times in a statement, “The Kennedy Center has long been an artistic center historically devoid of a political point of view, with programming agnostic to the policy shifts of the times. At its heart, ‘Hamilton’ celebrates American diversity. The recent shift in the Kennedy Center’s ideology and board leadership has made it untenable for a production like ‘Hamilton’ to celebrate and be celebrated there today.”
In audio of the board meeting obtained by the Washington Post, "Old Donald" seemed to suggest that he should host the honors going forward and that members would be added to the committee that chooses the honorees. Entertainers including Paul Anka, Sylvester Stallone, Johnny Mathis and Andrea Bocelli were also suggested for the award, and "Old Donald" mused about giving posthumous awards to Elvis Presley, Luciano Pavarotti and Babe Ruth. Posthumous awards have never before been given by the center.
“Elvis sells better as a dead man,” "Old Donald" said, according to the Washington Post.
"Old Donald" is seeking a more direct role. He replaced all the Biden appointees on the center’s once-bipartisan board, was elected chairman and installed a loyalist, Richard Grenell, as its president. The board is scheduled to meet Monday to consider a resolution, which has not been previously reported, that would give Mr. "Old Donald" more control over the selection of honorees.The resolution states that members of the committee responsible for selecting honorees “shall be appointed by the chairman of the board, and shall serve at the pleasure of the chairman,” according to a copy obtained by The Times. That would give Mr. "Old Donald" broad power to hire and fire those who help decide who will receive the honor, which recognizes people and institutions for lifetime artistic achievement. The committee will recommend a slate of honorees to the Kennedy Center’s president for approval, the resolution says.
“It’s absolutely outrageous. It’s sloppy, unprofessional,” said former 'Old Donald' campaign lawyer Joseph diGenova, 80, whose private information was included in the release.“It not only means identity theft, but I’ve had threats against me,” said diGenova — a fixture in Republican and Washington legal circles who has fiercely defended 'Old Donald' and has pounced on 'Old Donald'’s critics on cable news. “In the past, I’ve had to report real threats against me to the FBI. There are dangerous nuts out there.”
The release of the information raises legal questions under the Privacy Act of 1974, according to experts.
“Social Security is literally the keys to the kingdom to everybody,” said Mary Ellen Callahan, former chief privacy officer at the Department of Homeland Security. “It’s absolutely a Privacy Act violation.”
Many whose Social Security numbers were exposed had become high-ranking officials in Washington. They include a former assistant secretary of state, a former U.S. ambassador, researchers in the intelligence world, State Department workers and prominent lawyers.
This was in the wake of Watergate and Nixon,” said one former Senate staffer, who spoke on the condition anonymity to avoid becoming a target of identity theft. “The whole idea was to unveil the secret, illegal activities going on.”
Christopher Pyle, a former Army officer, exposed the Army’s hidden domestic intelligence operations and testified before Congress. He said his activities as a whistleblower landed him on the Nixon administration’s “enemies list.” Pyle was unaware that his Social Security number had become public until a Post reporter reached him by phone Wednesday.
“I’m fascinated that this ended up in the released papers,” he said. “Good Lord, government doing foolish things as usual.”
An award recommendation for James W. McCord Jr. — a longtime, high-level CIA employee who was later convicted in the Watergate burglary — says he was instrumental in developing “fluoroscopic scanning” that enabled the CIA to “detect hidden technical listening devices” for the first time. Intelligence agencies spent “large sums of money” to develop such a capability, the document states, adding that McCord — who died in 2017 — and others had “contributed significantly to the future clandestine use of this technique on a world-wide basis.”
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People have mostly forgotten how bad measles can be. In a world where vaccination rates are typically above 95 percent, it’s incredibly rare to see even a single hospitalization for the condition. But, now, as outbreaks spread, parents across the country are desperately looking for a way to protect their children from an infection with a fatality rate of around 1 in 1,000. That might sound low, but compare it to COVID-19 in 2020 in children age 5: It’s around 100 times more deadly. And for kids who survive measles, there can be other nasty complications. For example, there is evidence that for some kids measles permanently damages the immune system, leaving them more vulnerable to other diseases.
