Donald Trump’s Self-Imposed Role as Culture Czar Perverts Arts & Culture

How Trump’s cultural interference reshapes institutions, honors, and national identity.

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With his firehose of executive orders and policy initiatives flooding the headlines after Trump has captured the Oval Office for the second time, the media can only report on what they consider the most important for the public to know. The topics they consider as “lesser” often go under-chronicled.

But while some of these may seem rather inconsequential on their surface, when taken in context, they conform to Trump’s authoritarian takeover of the federal government in his imperial project.

President Donald Trump announced on his so-called Truth Social platform on February 7, 2025, that he will be taking over the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, gutting its current board of trustees, firing its chair, and installing himself as chair.

For Trump, in addition to his imposing his political agenda on The Pentagon, for example, or dismantling federal agencies such as the United States Agency for International Development, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Department of Education, and others, he has been conducting a fierce battle in his war…