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sheshe2

(96,527 posts)
Wed Feb 4, 2026, 10:12 AM 6 hrs ago

This is🤣and spot on -Kennedy Center teaches MAGA a tough lesson

Kennedy Center teaches MAGA a tough lesson

The myth that Donald Trump has a strategic vision took another hilarious blow on Sunday when he threw a tantrum familiar to anyone who has ever dealt with a diagnosable narcissist. Without apparently telling anyone who actually has to deal with it, the 79-year-old toddler president declared on Truth Social that he was shutting down the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for two years following its Fourth of July celebrations. This “decision” comes a mere six weeks after Trump pretended to be “surprised” and “honored” when the center’s board, which he leads, voted illegally to rename it the Trump-Kennedy Center, a name that no one seems interested in using, at least when out of Trump’s earshot.

The president claims the closure, which will likely last the rest of his term, is about “Construction, Revitalization, and Complete Rebuilding.” Few believe this. Most accept that it is an obvious reaction to the fact that a growing list of artists have cancelled shows at the Kennedy Center to avoid the taint of performing at a place where the word “Trump” was forced onto the building’s signage. The list of cancellations is so long that it has its own Wikipedia page, which features luminaries like Philip Glass, Béla Fleck, the Martha Graham Dance Company, the Washington National Opera and the entire cast of “Hamilton.”

The situation is a great example of how narcissists defeat themselves. As he’s done his whole life, Trump stole a trophy he didn’t earn in the hope that he would impress people. Instead, his grotesque behavior backfired and has drawn even more insults and rejections. But what’s even more fascinating is what this whole debacle tells us about the MAGA movement as a whole, and how Trump is the perfect symbol for their failed culture war aspirations.

To people outside the MAGA bubble, Trump’s obsession with the Kennedy Center is just plain weird. Obviously, he feels intimidated by the looming cultural power of the 35th president and his wife, Jacqueline, and excluded from circles of people with good taste, even though he has no interest in actually learning to appreciate art or music beyond middle-of-the-road Broadway showtunes from the 1980s. He won’t grow up and, as normal people do, be happy not to be included in pastimes that bore him. This manifestation of his deep psychological issues reflects a major resentment that fuels the larger MAGA movement: anger at the larger culture for not dumbing itself down to placate their own pedestrian tastes and bigoted blind spots.



https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/kennedy-center-teaches-maga-a-tough-lesson/ar-AA1VDZJr

.........................................

The author really nailed it here.
30 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight: NoneDon't highlight anything 5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
This is🤣and spot on -Kennedy Center teaches MAGA a tough lesson (Original Post) sheshe2 6 hrs ago OP
he picked bobby to smear the kennedy name. period. mopinko 6 hrs ago #1
If he tears it down, no way he rebuilds it. Johonny 6 hrs ago #2
His repuke congress will turn the other way and say nothing when he tears it down without their permission. kimbutgar 5 hrs ago #6
The White House isn't his either, FoxNewsSucks 5 hrs ago #9
i wonder what else he is going to destroy? MadameButterfly 4 hrs ago #15
Well, we have precedence - what did Congress do when he TBF 4 hrs ago #10
Hope the house changes hands in 2027. Johonny 3 hrs ago #22
Absolutely spot on - thanks for the post. n/t iluvtennis 5 hrs ago #3
You have got to read the whole article. It's beautiful. Ray Bruns 5 hrs ago #4
Kinda like the white house mdbl 2 hrs ago #25
Yup. It goes back to NYC society snubbing him. He never got over it. Joinfortmill 5 hrs ago #5
Also here: https://www.salon.com/2026/02/04/kennedy-center-teaches-maga-a-tough-lesson/ the nelm 5 hrs ago #7
Perfect! mysteryowl 5 hrs ago #8
I read it and also picked out this part as absolutely crucial Prairie Gates 4 hrs ago #11
Anger that people won't laugh at fart jokes leftstreet 4 hrs ago #18
Don't leave out the credit. The author is Amanda Marcotte JHB 4 hrs ago #12
An aging, decrepit, demented senile fool......... AZ8theist 4 hrs ago #13
Kids have more sense. Woodwizard 4 hrs ago #14
But wait... THERE'S MORE!! QueerDuck 4 hrs ago #16
DURec leftstreet 4 hrs ago #17
ETTD. nt wiggs 4 hrs ago #19
Next the oaf will be dictating to restaurants that they can't serve foods of which he doesn't approve, Totally Tunsie 4 hrs ago #20
REPUBLICANS are obsessed with the Kennedys' greatness and live love laugh 4 hrs ago #21
Kennedy Center Withdrawals gfarber 3 hrs ago #23
I want to formulate a thoughtful reply. This is a good post as far as it goes, but here's the thing: PatrickforB 3 hrs ago #24
If only magats weren't incapable of (or is it indifferent to) Six117 1 hr ago #26
This is perfectly on target. love_katz 1 hr ago #27
Where's the "lesson?" NM Grins 1 hr ago #28
What's the "tough lesson?" Grins 1 hr ago #29
And when some MAGA jerk "gets their ass handed to them," or if they they get "torn a new ass"... QueerDuck 22 min ago #30

Johonny

(25,735 posts)
2. If he tears it down, no way he rebuilds it.
Wed Feb 4, 2026, 10:23 AM
6 hrs ago

And no way should Congress allow him to tear it down. It isn't his.

kimbutgar

(26,973 posts)
6. His repuke congress will turn the other way and say nothing when he tears it down without their permission.
Wed Feb 4, 2026, 11:01 AM
5 hrs ago

He has no guardrails and is going to do whatever he wants and no one will stop him.

FoxNewsSucks

(11,533 posts)
9. The White House isn't his either,
Wed Feb 4, 2026, 11:30 AM
5 hrs ago

but Congress did nothing to stop that piece of shit and his **** wife from desecrating it.

MadameButterfly

(3,854 posts)
15. i wonder what else he is going to destroy?
Wed Feb 4, 2026, 12:03 PM
4 hrs ago

Maybe he thinks we'll learn our lessons and start bowing down to him. He doesn't understand how most of humanity works.

TBF

(35,956 posts)
10. Well, we have precedence - what did Congress do when he
Wed Feb 4, 2026, 11:32 AM
4 hrs ago

bulldozed the East Wing?

Expect more of the same.

Johonny

(25,735 posts)
22. Hope the house changes hands in 2027.
Wed Feb 4, 2026, 12:40 PM
3 hrs ago

Although predictions are more GOPers find their voice once primary season ends. We will see.

Ray Bruns

(6,085 posts)
4. You have got to read the whole article. It's beautiful.
Wed Feb 4, 2026, 10:54 AM
5 hrs ago

“As Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times recently wrote, “The only thing Trump and his allies know how to do is use the coercive force of the state.” It seems the president really did think he could just remake the Kennedy Center in his own trashy image, and that people would, like zombies, continue to book shows and buy tickets there. Instead, he got his stink all over the place, and now no one wants to be associated with it”

mdbl

(8,253 posts)
25. Kinda like the white house
Wed Feb 4, 2026, 01:45 PM
2 hrs ago

No one wants to sit in a gaudy decorated no-class building except suck-up sycophants.

the nelm

(250 posts)
7. Also here: https://www.salon.com/2026/02/04/kennedy-center-teaches-maga-a-tough-lesson/
Wed Feb 4, 2026, 11:04 AM
5 hrs ago

Amanda Marcotte's column on Salon.

Prairie Gates

(7,497 posts)
11. I read it and also picked out this part as absolutely crucial
Wed Feb 4, 2026, 11:35 AM
4 hrs ago
He won’t grow up and, as normal people do, be happy not to be included in pastimes that bore him. This manifestation of his deep psychological issues reflects a major resentment that fuels the larger MAGA movement: anger at the larger culture for not dumbing itself down to placate their own pedestrian tastes and bigoted blind spots.


Much of the MAGA prattling about "elitism" also comes down to this.

leftstreet

(39,437 posts)
18. Anger that people won't laugh at fart jokes
Wed Feb 4, 2026, 12:17 PM
4 hrs ago

The rage that follows the humiliation - when they realize most people haven't bent over guffawing at fart jokes since middle school

JHB

(38,056 posts)
12. Don't leave out the credit. The author is Amanda Marcotte
Wed Feb 4, 2026, 11:46 AM
4 hrs ago

Is it too much to ask to promote liberal authors and commenters?

If it were some damn NeverTrumper who spent their career building the road to Trump, someone like Rick Wilson or Charlie Sykes, you can bet that their name would be right in the subject line. But liberals who've been calling the shots accurately for years? Apparently they don't have names.

AZ8theist

(7,131 posts)
13. An aging, decrepit, demented senile fool.........
Wed Feb 4, 2026, 11:52 AM
4 hrs ago

...with the intellect of a 5 year old.

IS HE DEAD YET???????????????

Woodwizard

(1,281 posts)
14. Kids have more sense.
Wed Feb 4, 2026, 12:01 PM
4 hrs ago

My granddaughter presently 5 going on 6 in 3 weeks surprises me regularly how perceptive and insightful children can be.

Trump is a mentally defective narcissist there is no age bracket for his type.

QueerDuck

(1,205 posts)
16. But wait... THERE'S MORE!!
Wed Feb 4, 2026, 12:10 PM
4 hrs ago
The most glaring recent example of the moment is the MAGA-wide tantrum over Bad Bunny headlining the Super Bowl’s halftime show. Due to a combination of incuriosity and racist hostility to the reggaeton star’s music, which he performs mostly in Spanish, most right-wingers don’t like Bad Bunny and have no interest in learning why others do. This would be fine — if they could have a healthy reaction to other people having different tastes, which is to shrug and say “not for me.” Instead, the right-wing propaganda machine whipped the MAGA coalition into an outrage, insisting that they are owed a pop culture that always favors their blinkered tastes, even though they’re often cringeworthy or, at best, decades out of date, as evidenced by the washed-up Kid Rock headlining Turning Point USA’s “alternative” halftime show.

MAGA’s backlash against Bad Bunny is just the most recent in an endless parade of right-wing freak-outs that stretch back over decades involving the perceived insult of most people having better, more modern or more interesting tastes. Nearly every time a non-white person headlines the Super Bowl halftime show, we get a version of this whining. We witnessed rage about Taylor Swift and the “Barbie” movie. On Sunday night, some MAGA influencers clearly watched the Grammys only so they could feel victimized by the proceedings. The anger is as boring and predictable as the music that evangelical Christian families offer their kids as weak substitutes for real pop tunes.

Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Center symbolizes the end game of this endless, pointless grievance: A hope that MAGA can take by force the cultural popularity that will never be offered freely. After his election in 2024, there was a short period of elation on the right as initial reports suggested movie and TV studios would be shuttering projects with racially diverse casts and CBS announced that liberal comedian Stephen Colbert’s late-night show was being canceled. Promises of more conservative-friendly programming were made. We also saw this in the immediate aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s killing, when MAGA tried to browbeat the public into pretending to like Kirk, with threats of doxxing and firing for people who refused to play along.

But you cannot bully people into liking you. That was demonstrated after Jimmy Kimmel nearly got fired by ABC from his late-night show for a relatively mild joke about the right’s reaction to Kirk’s fatal shooting. Audience outrage led Disney to swiftly reinstate Kimmel, and it’s no wonder. Late-night ratings are already down as fewer people watch live TV. If ABC had tried to replace a genuinely funny comedian with a right-wing hack, no one would have watched at all. Turns out that forcing ordinary Americans to give up decent entertainment for some MAGA knock-off is much harder than most Trumpists thought.

Totally Tunsie

(11,657 posts)
20. Next the oaf will be dictating to restaurants that they can't serve foods of which he doesn't approve,
Wed Feb 4, 2026, 12:28 PM
4 hrs ago

meaning they'll all be reduced to serving hamburders, fish filet sandwiches, fried chicken and "American" fries.
Fine dining at its best.

live love laugh

(16,246 posts)
21. REPUBLICANS are obsessed with the Kennedys' greatness and
Wed Feb 4, 2026, 12:30 PM
4 hrs ago

have done everything to literally kill and destroy the Kennedy legacy—JFK Jr. included.

A few years ago, QANON et al were literally mocking JFK Jr. claiming he was joining the Republicans and wasn’t dead. Now they are doing a 180 and coming out to profit on some new movie about JFK Jr. And of course we know which party assassinated JFK.

The inability to let go of hatred and to believe that others can be great too is a hallmark, small minded, narcissistic trait of the Republican Party long before Trump came aboard. I say this because when Trump goes these things will seem to go away but they won’t unless people realize more than Trump’s behind this.

gfarber

(228 posts)
23. Kennedy Center Withdrawals
Wed Feb 4, 2026, 12:48 PM
3 hrs ago


There once was a hall by the Potomac bend,
Where the music and drama would regularly blend.
But Trump said, “Renovate!”
As the stages lay in wait—
For the shows had all fled in the end.

On CNN Dana Bash said one night,
“There’s no season ahead to recite.
No ballets, no bands,
No comics, no hands—
Just silence where spotlights invite.”

“The ’26–’27’s not real,”
Said a source with a blunt sort of zeal.
“There’s nothing to tout,
‘Cause they all backed out—
There’s no playbill left to reveal.”

He crowned himself chair with a grin,
Kicked the old board right out on their skin.
With loyalists near,
They voted “aye” here—
And renamed it for Trump, Kennedy in.

But Democrats raised a quick hand:
“That name change won’t legally stand.
By Congress it’s set,
You can’t change it yet
Without law in the nation’s command.”

Michelle Price noted, intrigued,
That the closure felt oddly fatigued:
“New carpet and chairs
Don’t shut down affairs—
This shutdown seems strategy-leagued.”

He bragged, “I could fix it just fine!”
With upholstery, carpet, and twine.
Yet two years go dark,
‘Cause the talent won’t park—
When the cancel list’s longer than the line.

And the crowd from D.C.’s nearby ring,
From Maryland, Virginia’s swing,
Never voted his way,
Protested all day—
So the seats wouldn’t fill with anything.

PatrickforB

(15,379 posts)
24. I want to formulate a thoughtful reply. This is a good post as far as it goes, but here's the thing:
Wed Feb 4, 2026, 12:48 PM
3 hrs ago

The text reads:
This manifestation of his deep psychological issues reflects a major resentment that fuels the larger MAGA movement: anger at the larger culture for not dumbing itself down to placate their own pedestrian tastes and bigoted blind spots.

Let's pull that apart and look at the way the MAGA movement arose in the first place. First, I will state that I am a 'member in good standing' of the so-called professional-managerial class, whose job it has been, heretofore, to prop up the wealth creation machine of the Pax Americana - the American empire.

The problem is the MAGA people:
a) Watch Fox 'news' in their leisure time.
b) Listen to right-wing talk radio any time they aren't watching Fox.

This is where the culture wars came from - they are wedges pounded in with the specific purpose to create polarization, because they are couched in such a way as to brainwash listeners with things that don't matter. So as a result, the MAGA people have begun to really dislike the professional-managerial class because they perceive that we:
a) talk down to them.
b) make fun of them.
c) do not address or even care about their issues, which include a deck that is stacked by Wall Street against EVERY WORKING AMERICAN, but the MAGATs have instead been manipulated to pick the wrong enemy. This is why they say things like, "I live to drink lib-rul tears!" Seriously. I have heard that time and again.
d) when racism enters the mix, then we see a perception on the part of the MAGAts that white men are an endangered species and that brown skinned people are getting preferential treatment, filling quotas, destroying opportunities that rightfully should go to supposedly better qualified white guys.
e) when homophobia and transphobia enters the mix, we see a big hue and cry about women's sports.
f) when xenophobia enters the mix, we see a similar hue and cry about immigrants, and the narrative equates them to brown-skinned people. So they get rounded up.

Why? Because these people got their lives ripped out from underneath them when NAFTA came along in the 1990s with third way Democrats and Republicans towing the Wall Street line. We arguably lost >800K jobs, mostly across what is now called the Rust Belt of the US. It began earlier, of course, in the 1980s when Wall Street fund managers began pressuring C-Suite officers of publicly traded companies to generate higher profits by laying off workers because Wall Street considers labor a liability.

So now, some of the most fervent Trump supporters are from areas in this country that have been economically depressed for decades. There is a book that talks about this called Dying of Whiteness, in which the author says that these people are quite willing now to forego affordable healthcare themselves as long as it hurts brown-skinned people and lib-ruls. Seriously.

Why? I'm sorry because I fear some may disagree with me here, but the Democratic Party's institutionalists have long acted to prop this system up while the right-wing propaganda machine brainwashes its listeners and viewers to believe that no one, and I mean no one cares about them in a system they correctly perceive (as do I and many of my economist colleagues) as being stacked against working people.

Because our system IS stacked against working people. I have been experiencing a deepening disappointment with the Democratic party because it talks about rights all the time, but is focusing on things that have little to do with MIDDLE CLASS kitchen table issues. I mean, I have to be honest. I spent the four years of Biden's administration being told (and amplifying that message for my own data customers) about how absolutely GREAT the economy is doing.

In the meantime, I was squeezed by inflation, especially pernicious with health care COSTS, and the result is that I spent that period carrying $10K in HEALTH CARE DEBT. I just spoke at length with a guy who wants me to caucus for a retired rear admiral who has raised $7million to run against Lauren Bobert. When I mentioned Medicare for all Americans, he said she, "Agrees that healthcare should be affordable." I said, "Wait a minute, the ACA was SUPPOSED to make my healthcare more affordable but why then did I get a 19.2% PREMIUM INCREASE this year, along with HIGHER COPAYS? And why do I have HEALTH CARE DEBT???"

So you know what? I'm fucking TIRED of the party telling me we have to get rid of the Republican MAGATs, making fun of them, telling each other how superior we are, because BOTH parties have been so corrupted by big dollar super-pac donors that no one really seems to care about MIDDLE CLASS KITCHEN TABLE ISSUES:
1) Healthcare.
2) Safe Social Security.
3) Better low- and no-cost childcare solutions.
4) Free or debt-free college for kids and grandkids.

Because THOSE ARE THE THINGS, IF ANY DEMOCRAT WANTS ANY MONEY FROM ME, THAT THEY HAD BETTER BE POUNDING ON. Right now, that ain't happening.

And what about the fucking Epstein files? Because I have daughters and granddaughters and I don't fucking care one little teeny tiny bit about WHO is on that list. They ALL need to be held accountable. So here is my question for my party's leaders:

Merrick Garland and Biden knew about these files that entire four years. Why in the hell weren't they much, much more aggressive about getting it out in the open??? Because Epstein demonstrably worked with Vladimir Putin to set up Trump with compromat, and to ship Eastern European girls over into this sex trafficking ring to obtain compromat on billionaires, politicians, and others.

And the Russian troll farms are working in overdrive to keep pounding the wedge on social media. See? I am honestly afraid that both parties, at the national level, have become so corrupted by these libertarian billionaires who want America to have a CEO (Thiel, Musk, Zuck, Bezos and others) because they know any kind of democracy is inimical to oligarchy and certainly Christian nationalism.

That's where we ARE right now, and it very much bothers me. I have been a public servant for nearly 40 years - it is all I have ever wanted to be, and I have been watching everything we should stand for being undermined for decades as Wall Street financiers and billionaires have steadily eroded our moral compass to the point where this society is so profoundly materialistic that we are literally destroying the habitability of our sacred earth.

We need to wake up to the urgent need for humanity to live in harmony with the earth, each other and God - and you don't have to agree with me about God. I'm not asking you to. But we sure as heck need to be living in harmony with the earth and each other and we need to impose just a basic moral compass - treat others the way you want to be treated. Because that is NOT how we've been operating.

One last thought. We are all now members of a 'Political-Industrial Complex.' I get dozens of texts and emails daily asking me to donate. They go something like: Here is an issue that should cause you outrage! We want to fight for you! Give us money!

Sorry, but I'm done giving anyone money. The middle class in this country has now been virtually squeezed to death by Wall Street greed, which is insatiable, and until I have universal healthcare, have cleared my HEALTHCARE DEBT, and can be confident the government gives enough of a shit about whether I live or die to FIX the fucking Social Security program so it doesn't run out of money, I'm done.

Grins

(9,320 posts)
29. What's the "tough lesson?"
Wed Feb 4, 2026, 03:09 PM
1 hr ago

1,000 words and bupkis. What’s the lesson the KC “taught” Trump? What did he learn from it?

QueerDuck

(1,205 posts)
30. And when some MAGA jerk "gets their ass handed to them," or if they they get "torn a new ass"...
Wed Feb 4, 2026, 04:08 PM
22 min ago

... rather than embrace the rhetorical flourishes, we should instead (in unison) demand to know "exactly how could their ass be handed to them without it being surgically removed?" or we should mock the effort with a resounding "oh yeah? where's the new ass?"

I guess every great rant is a target for a wet-blanket critique, eh?

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