Charlotte Higgins

Trump's obsession with the arts is part of the authoritarian project

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In Washington, Donald Trump's takeover of the Kennedy Center - the US's imposing national centre for the performing artspresents a bizarre, unnerving and, at times, bleakly comical spectacle. Last month, he announced himself its new chair, replaced 13 board members and inserted a new interim president, foreign policy adviser Richard Grenell. Last Monday, the president's motorcade disgorged him at the building. By this point, his and Melania Trump's portraits, alongside those of vicepresident JD Vance and his wife Usha, had been screwed to the wall beside the concert hall stage door.

Trump and his new trustees - who include Usha Vance and Fox presenter Laura Ingraham - then discussed changes to the Kennedy Center Honors, founded in the 1970s to recognise the greatest figures in American cultural life. Trump called previous recipients, who have ranged from Fred Astaire to Francis Ford Coppola, "radical left lunatics". Men such as singer Andrea Bocelli, who has performed at Mar-a-Lago, and Sylvester Stallone, who recently called Trump a "second George Washington", were floated for future honours. With the truculence of a slighted schoolboy, Trump opined that he had never much cared for Hamilton, after news that the musical has withdrawn from a 2026 run at the centre.