On Monday the Washington Post had a scoop on the latest round of President Grievance v.  America:

Leaders of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, installed by President Donald Trump, say the center is on the brink of bankruptcy and argue that putting the president’s name on its facade — and thus ensuring his fundraising efforts — may be the only way to avoid imminent and “certain fiscal collapse,” according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.

This was an amazing statement given the actual real world fact that fundraising completely collapsed after Trump tackily put his own name on the building. Seems that Trump is still seething after his name was removed from the building and is desperate to do anything to have it reattached. All the Kennedy Center Board has to do is put one of these 10—yes TEN—inscriptions on the front of the building:

I’d like to offer Option 11:   FUCK OFF!

I’m interested in Trump’s never-ending quest to get his name on that building. I have no idea if he has some attachment to the Camelot myth. It seems doubtful, considering his own personal aesthetic is Russian dictator, and his wife’s is just brutalist. But I suppose he’s always been aware that he doesn’t fit into high society, and the wholesale exit of the Kennedy Center’s major and minor donors after he took it over only reinforced that grievance.

All of these people are so weird and off-kilter. And if someone isn’t a sociopath, those can be appealing qualities. But no one in the Trump orbit is appealing. But even with all of that, something pulls Trump to the Kennedy Center. It isn’t his love of theater or opera or the symphony. It’s obviously not the building itself, since he’s so anxious to tear it down (when he’s not trying to put his name on it).

I think it’s because he knows many Americans have a personal connection to the center because they’ve seen a production or visited it during a trip to DC. My first visit was on a class trip as a high school senior. I remember we went to see an entry in a theater festival—“Night Mother”, not really a great fit for high school seniors, but I still remember being excited that we got to go to the Kennedy Center. Every trip I took to DC after that included a show at the Kennedy Center, and once I moved to DC for grad school and beyond, I kept attending. And Trump must know how many people have that same connection to that building and its mythologized president who will be remembered long after we have scrubbed and scratched and deleted his own name off every single thing it inappropriately appears on.

And this afternoon, just ahead of the Kennedy Center board meeting to discuss Trump’s threats, the federal judge who told Trump he can’t just put his name on the building repeated himself:

No means no, Donnie.

On Monday Tom Nichols wrote in The Atlantic:

The president’s admission suggests a way to deal with his attempted shakedown of the Kennedy Center board: take his dare.

The center’s top officials, the people who were supposed to be entrusted with the future of this cultural icon, have admitted their failure. They acknowledge that Trump will not support the institution unless his name is on it. Well, so be it. The trustees should let the center close, declare bankruptcy, and come to a sad end—all on Trump’s watch. Allow the Kennedy Center to fail in full view of the American public, and let them decide whether such things matter.

Otherwise, Trump will plow ahead and do something no one wants, because no one bothered to stop him.

Yes, they absolutely should, but the Kennedy Center board is full of Trump lackeys, and the judge’s decision pre-empted them from taking Trump’s threat-disguised-as-a-bargain. Remember, they’re the ones who let him put his name on the building in the first place. They’re the ones who let the tarps stay up to cover up the fact his name is off the building. They’re the ones who let him close it down for his fake renovation, and yes they did vote to close the center since they had no other option:

President Donald Trump’s handpicked Kennedy Center board voted Tuesday to immediately shutter the performing arts center, a source familiar with the decision said, after its members argued the institution is in “dire” financial and structural shape.

The board’s vote came shortly after a federal judge in Washington, D.C., rejected the board’s latest effort to add Trump’s name to the building’s facade — a move the board says is necessary to save the memorial to John F. Kennedy from bankruptcy.

This is interesting:

President Donald Trump, the board’s chairman, joined the closed-door meeting virtually and spent several minutes criticizing both Beatty and the judge who blocked his name from being added to the façade, according to a source familiar with the meeting.

President Grievance was whining? You don’t say. Please note that this issue is not yet dead:

n a separate resolution that was not expected to be taken up Tuesday, the Kennedy Center said it “is in a dire financial position” and facing potential bankruptcy after it “exhausted its fiscal resources” and that only the board’s chairman, President Donald Trump, is in a position to rescue it.

In order to do so, the board had said he would have to be recognized for his efforts on the exterior of the building.

And that is exactly why this is clear example of Trump as an abuser. He knows that people care more about the Kennedy Center than about him, and unless they let him defile the Center with his name and his ideas about how to make it look like it smells like old cigarettes and sweat, he will destroy it. And all the while he is constantly telling us that it’s our fault that he is hurting us.

I’ll leave you with this: