Trump calls Kennedy Center 'dilapidated,' says he'll remake it

Senator says the planned two-year closure and renovation are meant to cover up president's failures

- Jessica Gelt

VISITORS pass the sculpture of the 35th president's head at what was the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.

Photographs by RAHMAT GUL Associated Press

Less than a year after taking over the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and appointing himself chairman, President Trump has announced that the venue will shut down for two years, beginning July 4, to undergo a major renovation.

"This important decision... will take a tired, broken, and dilapidated Center, one that has been in bad condition, both financially and structurally for many years, and turn it into a World Class Bastion of Arts, Music and Entertainment, far better than it has ever been before," Trump wrote Sunday on his social media website.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (DR.I.), who serves as an ex officio member of the center's board of trustees, condemned Trump's decision to close the venue in a statement issued early Monday.

"As President Trump continues his demolition tour of Washington, he's now setting his sights on one of America's great cultural institutions," Whitehouse said. "And yet again, he's bucking rules and convention to do so. If he succeeds, it will be because of a series of suspect and illegal actions to commandeer the Kennedy Center as a clubhouse for his friends and political allies and install leadership who will satisfy his every whim.

Whitehouse attributed Trump’s decision to an attempt to cover up “his failures by shuttering a national landmark that belongs to the American people” and noted that the president announced his intentions without getting input from “from the Board, Congress, and others, as law and precedent dictate.”