Why Trump Got Sick of Ric Grenell
Thirteen months was all it took to break the Kennedy Center. The news of Ric Grenell’s exit—or, his “plans to transition out of his role,” as Axios put it when breaking the story yesterday—suggests the end of a high period in which the Kennedy Center has continually pissed people off, and the beginning of one in which fewer and fewer people even notice it.
One clue to this new direction can be found in Grenell’s apparent replacement. President Trump announced on Truth Social that Matt Floca, the Kennedy Center’s vice president of facilities, would lead the place. Floca began working at the organization during the Biden administration but became Trump’s go-to renovation buddy—someone Trump started to call regularly for updates about all the changes he had ordered, such as redoing the seats in the opera house, according to The New York Times.
The personnel swap comes nearly three months after Trump’s handpicked board of trustees voted to add his name to the Kennedy Center, and a little more than a month since the president’s jaw-dropping announcement that he plans to shut down the building for two years to overhaul it. These were political shocks, and to some people, they were also moral ones: Why was the president so obsessed with a concert venue? Was he trying to kill the National Symphony Orchestra? For a year, the face of these controversies was Grenell, who defended them loudly, especially on X.
One person with close knowledge of high-profile programming at the center, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told me that Grenell’s departure “takes the politics out—not having a figurehead for the Kennedy Center who’s mouthing off all the time on socials.” It made sense to this person that a building expert would now be in charge. With the coming closure, “there just isn’t going to be much messaging coming out of the Kennedy Center in any way.” In other words, Trump still fully intends to remake the center in his image; he’d just like to limit the backlash. Whatever his talents, Grenell is not a no-backlash guy.
When the Kennedy Center opened in 1971, the idea was for it to be a “living monument” to a slain president and a national arts center that embodied the cosmopolitan aspirations of America’s political (but not cultural) capital. A public-private partnership funded by taxpayers, donors, and ticket-buyers made the center possible; its orchestra, opera, and theater were bipartisan draws. By 2019, the center had just completed a dramatic architectural expansion. It was, nevertheless, a little dusty-feeling. But Trump’s decision to take over the center was a statement less about its anachronistic reputation and more about the president’s conception of his own power.
Last February, Trump exploited his office’s traditional role as appointer of the board of trustees to purge members installed by previous administrations. He framed this in political terms—citing, for example, drag shows “targeting our youth”—and selected Grenell, a bomb-throwing loyalist who had previously served as Trump’s ambassador to Germany and later as the acting director of national intelligence.
As America’s Trumpiest arts administrator, Grenell seemed to relish the position and—like much of the rest of Trump’s inner circle—frequently performed his devotion to the president on X, particularly as artists and Kennedy Center patrons rejected Trump’s takeover. He called the Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda “intolerant of people who don’t agree with him politically” for yanking a run of the musical from the Kennedy Center. He got into an extended email exchange in which he accused a relatively low-profile artist—the talented fingerstyle guitarist Yasmin Williams—of being vapid and prejudiced against Republicans. He accused the former Kennedy Center leadership of “fraud” and fiscally ruinous management, something those leaders denied. On numerous occasions, his communications team ignored questions from reporters, and then Grenell slammed them by name on X.
Under Grenell, the institution became the “Trump Kennedy Center” months before the board made that name official. There were more Christian-themed programs, venue rentals to right-wing groups such as the Conservative Political Action Conference, and events aligned with the Trump administration’s priorities, including a Saudi investment forum the same week that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman visited Trump in Washington. At the World Cup draw in December, Trump received the first-ever “FIFA Peace Prize” during an event that forced the postponement or relocation of orchestra concerts and other programs. In January, the documentary Melania had its world premiere at the Kennedy Center.
Although Grenell boasted of wiping out overpaid executives, rescuing the center’s finances, and bringing in massive fundraising hauls, a Washington Post analysis of publicly available ticket data found that sales had plummeted. The name change only deepened the problems: Prominent soloists such as the banjoist Béla Fleck and notable troupes such as the Martha Graham Dance Company and the San Francisco Ballet dropped Kennedy Center dates in tacit or explicit protest. Philip Glass, perhaps the United States’ most celebrated living composer, pulled the world premiere of a symphony from the orchestra’s calendar. The Washington National Opera left. Whereas some events, including a concert by the Vienna Philharmonic, sell out the house, swaths of empty seats remain a regular sight.
And now it is closing. Trump has said the full shutdown is necessary for a proper renovation, but many staffers see it as a way to cover for plummeting revenue and incessantly negative news coverage. Representative Joyce Beatty, an Ohio Democrat who serves as an ex officio board member, is suing to stop the closure. Grenell, who lives in California, was rarely present at the center, and a current staffer, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told me this week that Grenell’s departure was widely expected by employees. “There was a lack of leadership; he literally was just never around,” this person told me. “And he didn’t empower his deputies to make decisions on his behalf.” This staffer’s job, along with many others’, will end in July when the center closes its doors.
Numerous questions about the Kennedy Center remain unanswered. The National Symphony Orchestra, which has retained its affiliation and is on an artistic hot streak, will seek new venues for the next two years—an unprecedented challenge for a major American orchestra, given the short notice. It is unclear what will happen to already scheduled Broadway tours that have dates during the stretch the center will now be closed, or where the annual Kennedy Center Honors, which Trump cast and hosted last year, will take place. Responding to an email on Friday, the Kennedy Center’s communications chief simply wrote, “I’d point you to the Chairman’s statement”—meaning Trump’s Truth Social post—“and the Axios piece.”
On Friday, before he announced Floca’s new role (which is not president, but chief operating officer and executive director), Trump shared renderings of the “new, highly improved, TRUMP KENNEDY CENTER!” They don’t look like a teardown in the slightest, which should allay some critics’ fears, but more like the center as it is today, only slightly “yassified.” After July, when the orchestra packs up and the musicals find new homes, it won’t really be the Kennedy Center. It’ll just be a building.
I’ve long wondered why Grenell, a man who hadn’t wanted the job he had—at least not for any reason other than making Trump happy—bothered with so much online combat on the Kennedy Center’s behalf. As a sort-of member of a historically punchy administration, perhaps he saw fighting the critics as the core aspect of the job. (It certainly seemed that way to me in January, when Grenell called me to complain about “fake news” after I ran a headline he didn’t like in The Washington Post, where I previously worked.) But Trump has his own limits. CNN reported yesterday that the president had finally become frustrated with all the negative headlines about the revamp. According to Axios, Grenell will “still be active in the organization as an unpaid consultant.” Like the ushers, he’ll be a volunteer.