Rep. Bob Onder (R-Mo.) put forth a bill last Wednesday seeking to rename the Kennedy Center after President Donald Trump, who is conducting an overhaul of the cultural institution.
The bill comes after a similar effort earlier last week in which House Republicans pushed for the Kennedy Center’s opera house to be named after first lady Melania Trump.
In a statement last week announcing his bill, Onder cited the president and former reality TV star’s “love and mastery of entertainment.”
“You would be hard pressed to find a more significant cultural icon in the past 40 years than President Trump,” Onder said. “President Trump’s love and mastery of entertainment has stood the test of time and allowed him to capture Americans’ attention for decades.”
“I cannot think of a more ubiquitous symbol of American exceptionalism in the arts, entertainment, and popular culture at large than President Trump.”
According to its website, the Kennedy Center serves as a “living memorial” for former President John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1963, and it “strives to cultivate a culture of inclusiveness, in which our art and our audiences are as rich, diverse, and ever-changing as America itself.”
Located in Washington, D.C., the center hosts about 2,000 performances and about 2 million visitors each year, the website states.
But Trump has worked to drastically reshape the center in recent months. In February, he fired 18 Kennedy Center board members, all of whom were appointed by former President Joe Biden. The new board then elected Trump as chairman.
“We didn’t like what they were showing and various other things,” Trump said in February. “We’re going to make sure that it’s good and it’s not going to be ‘woke.’”
His takeover has been met with protest: writer-actor Issa Rae and singer-musician Rhiannon Giddens canceled their respective shows at the center, as did the producers of “Hamilton.”
Moreover, several people have since resigned from the board — including Shonda Rhimes — and other roles — including Ben Folds, the artistic adviser at the National Symphony Orchestra, and Renée Fleming, the Kennedy Center’s artistic adviser at large.
The White House, Onder and the Kennedy Center did not immediately reply to HuffPost’s request for comment.