President Donald Trump wants his name to go back on the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and he’s going to court to fight for it again with a brief some legal analysts are chuckling over.
Trump was forced to remove his name from the Kennedy Center after U.S. District Judge Christopher R. Cooper ruled that the statute establishing the building specified the name and enshrined it in law. While his name has been removed from the building, the giant tarp covering the front facade hasn’t been removed. The judge made it clear that the tarp must be removed by June 31.
The court filing sings his own praises, saying that the trustee board, composed of his own members, decided that he has so much experience building things that his name should be on it.
“In addition, the President’s tremendous construction abilities would fix the building and restore it as the crown jewel of Washington D.C. and the envy of the World,” it says at one point.
It touts his building talents again in the page that followed, saying, “[Trump] restored the Center’s financial future and donated his time, energy and unparallelled construction talents to save the Center. In recognition of these investments and his success in saving the declining facility, the Board voted overwhelmingly to recognize the president by naming the Center the “Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.”
Lawfare legal analyst Roger Parloff highlighted the portion, noting the “brief [was] nominally signed by Asst. AG Shumate, but [sounds] markedly like Trump at points.”
As former CBS News reporter Scott MacFarlane recalled, the judge in one of the cases wants to see both parties in court on July 10
As Forbes reported on Tuesday, the filing also claims that removing Trump’s name would result in the loss of millions of dollars. In fact, the Kennedy Center has already suffered significant losses.
“The financial harms caused by the injunction will never be recovered,” the filing reads, “and the hundreds of millions in gifts will have to be immediately returned, or not received by the Center. A stay should therefore issue to protect the Center from financial ruin.”
The reason Trump’s administration gives is that the donations were raised under the name “The Trump-Kennedy Center,” and now that the name is gone, the funding must be returned. The donors “were only willing to do so with the name ‘Trump’ on the Building.”
The court filing also says that Trump was able to raise “$258 million from Congress” for the Kennedy Center and “hundreds of millions” more from private donors. Congress appropriated $257 million to the Kennedy Center.
The Kennedy Center is one of many places where Trump has attempted to put his name since his second term began. He sought to rename Dulles Airport after himself and successfully renamed the Institute of Peace to include his name. He has also put a photo of himself on special edition U.S. passports and 2026 national park passes. The Palm Beach International Airport is now also to be changing its name to celebrate Trump.
A Daily Beast reader commented on a story about the tarp that hasn’t been removed and the mockery it drew this week from host Bill Maher. That person wrote, “Trump is just so petty about everything and to continue bringing attention to his embarrassment by not removing the tarps is so 4-year-old behavior.”
A former Minnesota state senator remarked, “This is all bulls—— and should be treated accordingly.”