Ric Grenell’s Defense of the Trump Kennedy Center Should Be Embarrassing. He Feels No Shame.

AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic

Ric Grenell wants you to believe the renaming of the Kennedy Center is about competence. About spreadsheets and fundraising totals and managerial seriousness. About rescuing a once-neglected institution through discipline and donor enthusiasm. This, he insists, is what leadership looks like.

That is the tell.

The White House announced that the board of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts had voted unanimously to rename the institution the “Trump Kennedy Center.” The announcement was delivered as if it were routine. That was the most disturbing detail. Not the audacity, but the ease. Not the transgression, but the absence of shame.

The vote was unanimous because unanimity was the purpose. The board has been stocked with Trump loyalists who understand the assignment—compliance, not deliberation. Trump allies, including Ric Grenell, were appointed over the past year as part of a broader effort to bring the institution to heel. The outcome did not require persuasion. It required alignment.

Even conservative commentators recoiled. Erick Erickson, a longtime Republican voice, described the move as “third-world African kleptocracy,” writing that one could “swap out Trump for Mugabe” and recognize the same behavior. That critique cut through because it named the dynamic plainly. This was not about honoring service. It was about personalizing the state.

The erosion of restraint around presidential self-regard did not begin here. Trump has spent years blurring the line between public office and personal brand. What distinguishes this episode is that no one involved bothered to pretend otherwise.

The renaming required institutional surrender. It found its most eager supplier in Ric Grenell.

Grenell, the chair of the Kennedy Center board and a longtime Trump loyalist, has become the loudest defender of the decision. His public rationale is blunt and repetitive. Donald Trump raised money. Donald Trump cut staff. Donald Trump pleased donors. Therefore, Donald Trump deserves to have a national cultural institution bear his name.

Grenell offers this logic proudly. He posts fundraising totals as proof of virtue. In one instance, he boasted that the Kennedy Center had raised more than $117 million in under a year under Trump’s influence, presenting the figure not as a financial update but as a moral credential. He compares those totals to Democratic Party fundraising as if partisan dominance were an artistic achievement. He celebrates staffing reductions as evidence of seriousness. The implication is unmistakable. Financial performance converts public institutions into personal property.

This is the language of court politics.

Grenell speaks of the Kennedy Center the way a functionary speaks of tribute. Look what I delivered. Look how generous the patrons are. Look how efficiently the leader’s will has been carried out. The institution itself disappears in this accounting—the performances, the artists, the audiences, the cultural mission. All that remains is a donor total and a name.

In a democratic system, leaders are temporary and institutions are meant to endure. They are not renamed as rewards for fundraising prowess. They are not rebranded to flatter living politicians still seeking power. The Kennedy Center was created to honor a presidency after history had rendered its verdict, not to serve as a monument erected in anticipation of one.

Grenell insists that Trump has “depoliticized” the Kennedy Center. He has said the center is now free of politics and open to everyone. He makes this claim while framing critics as ideological elites, while tallying partisan scorecards, while treating scrutiny as hostility. When every defense is personal and every justification partisan, politics has not been removed. It has been concentrated.

Kleptocracies do not require coercion. They rely on people who internalize the leader’s desires and act on them without being asked.

Grenell did not misunderstand his role. He perfected it by grasping what the job had become: not protecting institutions from power, but delivering them to it intact and obedient. He treated stewardship as flattery and governance as performance. The system rewarded him for understanding that distinction no longer mattered.

This should be deeply embarrassing for Grenell and for everyone involved. A national institution was bent to flatter one man’s vanity, and its chair took pride in explaining why that was deserved. The fact that it is not embarrassing is the point. Shame only exists if you believe institutions have dignity independent of the people who temporarily control them.

Grenell does not believe that. Neither does the board that voted unanimously. Neither does the White House that announced it without hesitation.

Grenell will insist he was simply doing his job.

In this system, he was.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.