Mr. Trump said he was initially turned off by the sight of dozens of dancers lying onstage. (He recalled thinking: “You’ve got to be kidding. Let’s get out of here.”) But then he had a change of heart.
“I walked in, I saw all these bodies, and then I noticed those bodies were gorgeous,” Mr. Trump said. “They had silk tights on, and they were all ballerinas, and women from Broadway. And men.” About the men, he added: “I didn’t find those particular bodies as attractive to be honest.”
After a board member asked if there were any new musicals that were not “totally woke,” somebody replied that, in a break with the past, the center would be doing some shows not affiliated with Actors’ Equity, the union representing actors. The person said that the change “opens us up for a whole bunch of more options as well as a lot more money.”
He wants to remake the Kennedy Center Honors, which he said celebrated “radical left lunatics.”
Mr. Trump has been preoccupied with the Kennedy Center Honors, the annual awards ceremony, since his first term, after several artists being honored criticized him. In response, the president boycotted the ceremony, breaking with tradition.
At the meeting on Monday, Mr. Trump complained that the center had been celebrating “radical left lunatics” and proposed giving posthumous awards to Pavarotti, Presley and Ruth. (Artists being honored posthumously, of course, cannot weigh in on current politics. Pavarotti, who died in 2007, had already been honored by the Kennedy Center in 2001; in 2016 his heirs asked Mr. Trump to stop playing his recordings at campaign rallies.)
Kennedy Center Honors have traditionally been bestowed on artists. But Mr. Trump suggested they might also look to the world of sports, politics and business, naming the casino mogul Steve Wynn, a major Republican donor, as a potential recipient. (Mr. Trump appointed Mr. Wynn’s wife, Andrea, to the Kennedy Center’s board.)
