What did Donald Trump do today?

He said he wouldn't completely destroy another physical monument to the Kennedy legacy, for whatever that's worth.

An enormous amount of Trump's time and waning energy during his second term has been spent on the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, which isn't even part of the executive branch. He's spent whole days touring it, replaced its board with loyalists, shoehorned himself into an emcee gig for its annual awards ceremony, floated the idea of giving the nation's highest award for artistic achievement to a long-dead baseball player, dictated its programming, sampled custom marble arm-rests for its chairs, used it for a screening of a vanity project for his wife that doubles as a bribe, and slapped his own name up on the sign for it. (The name hasn't actually changed, no matter what he says.)

Predictably, both artists and patrons are having none of it. Last week, composer Philip Glass became the latest artist in a long list to cancel a show, and ticket sales have fallen off a cliff since Trump started trying to make it part of his personal brand. 

In a fairly obvious attempt to stave off further embarrassments like that, Trump abruptly announced over the weekend that the Kennedy Center would be closed for two years for "renovations," something he decided to do without informing anyone who works there. Their surprise at learning about his plans from social media might have come from the fact that the Kennedy Center just finished a $250 million renovation, which now looks like this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is the structure that Trump thinks is "broken, tired and dilapidated" and "kind of dangerous."

In describing his plans for it today, Trump promised to rip the structure down to its structural steel, but said that he wouldn't completely demolish the building itself.

Quite possibly he won't. In fact, quite possibly he'll never get around to doing the "renovations" either. But then, that is exactly the same lie that he told about the now-demolished East Wing of the White House. 

Why does this matter?

• Two years of music, dance, art, education, and children's programming is worth a lot more than Donald Trump's ego. 

• Anyone who thinks the Kennedy Center isn't fancy enough is either delusional or just has incredibly bad taste.  

• This is mad-king shit.