President Trump visited the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington on Monday for the first time since he stunned the cultural and political establishment nearly five weeks ago by taking over the institution.
“We’re here to have our first board meeting,” he told reporters as he toured the center with his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, and a few of the people he has appointed to the center’s board, including the country singer Lee Greenwood (he sings “God Bless the U.S.A.”) and the Fox News personalities Laura Ingraham and Maria Bartiromo.
piseirpgDuring the board meeting Mr. Trump floated the idea of hosting the Kennedy Center Honors ceremony himself, according to an audio recording of the meeting obtained by The New York Times. Mr. Trump boycotted the ceremony, an annual star-studded gala that is televised on CBS, during his first term after several of the artists who were being honored criticized him.
“The king of ratings, whether we like or not, the king of ratings,” Mr. Trump told the board, referring to himself. He added: “If you announced that, every network will start bidding on it,89vip slots going crazy, for whatever reason, that’s the way it is.”
He also discussed potential honorees, including giving posthumous awards to Luciano Pavarotti and Elvis Presley.
During the day he had some thoughts about programming at the Kennedy Center.
“I never liked ‘Hamilton’ very much,” he said, taking a poke at a show that canceled a planned tour there next year to protest his takeover of the institution, which had long been bipartisan.
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“What he said or didn’t say is between him and the people of North Carolina,” said Mr. Vance, former President Donald J. Trump’s running mate. He added: “I’ve seen some of the statements. I haven’t seen them all. Some of them are pretty gross, to put it mildly. Mark Robinson says that those statements are false, that he didn’t actually speak them. So I think it’s up to Mark Robinson to make his case to the people of North Carolina that those weren’t his statements.”
Disciplinary proceedings against Dr. Wax tested the tenure protections of professors and whether such protections allow them to voice opinions that many might find inappropriate or downright insulting. Many students said that they could not trust Dr. Wax to grade students without bias. But many professors — even those who found her comments profoundly racist — objected to disciplining her on the grounds of academic freedom.
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