As the president of the United States continues to threaten to completely demolish the world-renowned, long-revered Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the venue's tax returns have now gone public and exposed the depths of Donald Trump's lies throughout this entire fiasco.
In truth, Donald Trump is pitching a never-ending hissy fit over the Kennedy Center simply because he wants his name all over it. Deep down in his cold, dead heart, he knows that everyone hates him to his very core, and if he doesn't memorialize himself while he's still breathing, no one is going to do it once he's in the ground. He's admitted as much.
Yet he continues to publicly claim that he's actually trying to save the beloved performing arts venue from its inevitable ruin without his involvement.
Trump has repeatedly painted a dire picture of a crumbling Kennedy Center that was losing "hundreds of billions" of dollars before he "got involved."
But according to a copy of the Kennedy Center's 2025 tax returns that Zeteo just obtained and reported, those claims are not only a bunch of big, fat lies; Trump's involvement in the Center actually financially harmed the venue.
Trump's Kennedy Center kidnapping hit its first big snag in June, when a federal judge ordered that his name be removed from the iconic building's facade -- and it's all been downhill for Donald ever since.
We all watched with giddy pleasure as Donald Trump's name was ripped from the Center's exterior wall.
Removal of Trump's name from the "Kennedy Center" in Washington
By court order, Donald Trump's name was removed from the facade of the "Kennedy Center" in Washington.
The judge ruled that changing the name of this historic building is impossible without the approval of… pic.twitter.com/pSls9BEaeO— 𝕊𝕡𝕣𝕚𝕟𝕥𝕖𝕣 𝕻𝕣𝕖𝕤𝕤 (@SprinterPress) June 13, 2026
Since then, the president, his aides, and his carefully installed board of trustees have been fighting tooth and nail to get his foot back through the Kennedy Center's doors and his name back on its wall by claiming that the venue is dilapidated, struggling financially, and only his name and involvement can serve as the panacea. According to him, donors will stop donating, artists will stop performing, and guests will stop buying tickets without his involvement.
Yet the Kennedy Center's tax documents are now proving that Trump "is both lying about previous losses and hiding his own deliberate financial assault," according to Zeteo's report.
Program revenue declined by $16 million and pledges and grants declined by $30 million in the seven or so months after Trump began his Kennedy Center takeover. That was before he added his name to the building, a move that reportedly caused ticket sales and donations to plunge much further.
Interestingly, the tax return says that as of Sept. 30, 2025, roughly $330 million in federal appropriations — $310 million allotted for capital repair and restoration, and $20 million for operations and management — were being ‘held by [the] U.S. Treasury.’
It seems that Trump himself knows that this fiasco is coming to a head, after he was spotted aboard Air Force One with a placard that read "Kennedy Center DEMOLISHED," sparking an onslaught of emergency court filings in a desperate effort to prevent the president from leveling the venue out of pure, petulant, pathetic spite.
A federal judge has ordered that the Trump Administration must give more than 30 days' notice before making any changes to the Kennedy Center, including destroying it. Zeteo notes that, knowing Donald Trump, that court order may very well do nothing to stop him in the end.
"Trump has shown us who he is, and what he is liable to do, voices of authority be damned," Zeteo's report warns. "The saga of Trump vs. the Kennedy Center is not over yet. Not by a very long shot."
Frankly, we'll be lucky if he doesn't take a wrecking ball to the place in the dead of the night.
