Legend Weighs in on Trump’s Kennedy Center Battle

The Daily Beast/Reuters Barbra Streisand has slammed Donald Trump’s overhaul of the Kennedy Center as “galling and painful to witness.” The Hollywood legend, 84, published a scathing statement calling out the president’s “unchecked ego” as the Kennedy Center crisis spirals.

Trump, 80, has been insistent on slapping his name across the historic arts institution in Washington, D.C.

It serves as a living memorial to President John F.

Kennedy and was renamed to honor him after his assassination in 1963.

It officially opened to the public in 1971.

“The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts has stood as one of America’s great cultural venues.

Many of the world’s most accomplished actors, musicians, singers and dancers have graced its stages,” Streisand wrote on Thursday, adding, “Renaming the Cultural Center in JFK’s honor was a fitting choice, because he was a true champion of the arts.” The EGOT-winner was a Kennedy Center honoree in 2008, calling it “an honor [that] represented something larger than a career recognition.

It represented a belief in the importance of art to the life of a democracy.” “That is why what is happening to the Kennedy Center is so galling and painful to witness,” she wrote.

“When Donald Trump attempted to put his name alongside the late President Kennedy’s on the building’s entrance, the move was met with widespread opposition from artists and much of the public.” Since Trump returned to office, the Kennedy Center has become one of his many fixations.

The president not only made himself chairman of the arts center; he decided to rename the building to include his name.

In May, a federal judge blocked Trump from keeping his name on the building, either inside or outside.

Construction workers quickly removed “Donald J.

Trump” from its facade.

Trump has since thrown multiple tantrums, and his board voted to shut it down for two years.