The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington D.C. is a canary in a coal mine. As a bastion of arts and entertainment in one of the top five most liberal cities in America, it was always going to be a target for Donald Trump. Its maintenance is federally funded, and it is officially the national cultural center of the United States, authorized by a 1958 Act of Congress.

The outreach and programs it does are funded through donations and ticket sales, which means it’s a public-private partnership. But officially the board is determined by the federal government, which is why Donald Trump was able to take it over and install himself chairman of the board of trustees.

But the reason that the Kennedy Center is a harbinger of Trump’s intentions is because the arts have always been largely the domain of liberal society. Republicans have spearheaded campaigns to eliminate government funding for public broadcasting, for school arts programs, and for the National Endowment for the Arts, believing that all of those things are frivolous expenditures.

I think that’s mostly because they find so few artists who agree with their politics, despite being the rich people that Republican policies largely benefit.

In any case, it can hardly be said that Donald Trump, with the 3-foot gold letters spelling out his name plastered on the sides of buildings, is a beacon of refined culture and taste. So when you put the national cultural center — home to the Washington National Opera and the National Symphony Orchestra — in the hands of a man whose favorite song is by the Village People, you get something other than the vision of elegance and entertainment that was in the minds of the Center’s founders, or even the president for whom it’s named.

Nevertheless, President Trump chaired his first meeting recently, citing as his reason for taking over the institution “wokeness” that had run rampant. It’s rare to find a conservative who can define what “woke” means without simply sounding like a bigot, so they generally resort to hyperbole about nurses doing sex changes at schools and transgender men sneaking into women’s bathrooms.

That’s not what Trump complained about at the meeting, however. The seating, the décor, everything was up for grabs. He even discussed boarding up studios and rehearsal spaces because they didn’t have windows. As with everything that Trump has tried to dismantle in the less than two months since he was sworn in, he didn’t actually think there was a problem. It just needed Trumpification.

The conservative adage is, of course, “go woke, go broke.” But the “woke” Kennedy Center was thriving until the Trump takeover.

When Vice President JD Vance visited last week — for what the Guardian ironically noted was an “all-Russian programme that included Stravinsky’s Petrushka, the story of three puppets brought to life by a charlatan” — he was roundly booed. The interim director that Trump appointed, former Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell wrote on X, “It troubles me to see that so many in the audience appear to be white and intolerant of diverse political views. Diversity is our strength.”

The Kennedy Center never suffered from a lack of diversity until conservatives took it over and MADE it political. Plenty of Republicans have attended shows at the historic venue, and they weren’t booed until they decided that the Center was too diverse — so diverse that it had gone “woke.”

The adage may need to be updated at this point, to “Go ANTI-woke, go broke.” Sally Quinn, an author and journalist in D.C., has observed that their zeal for eliminating diversity is leading to despair and actual, tangible losses.

Everybody feels the atmosphere is toxic here and you can’t get away from it. People are so distraught and so down and in despair. The question is, what can we do? That’s what people are asking in Washington. The biggest feeling of all is impotence: They can’t stop it.

They’re being very imaginative in their atrocities. They trashed the Kennedy Center and threw everybody out and put Laura Ingraham on the board. The Kennedy Center has been so much a part of the city for so long and suddenly it’s gone. They’ve lost in the first couple of weeks 50% of their ticket sales. They’re not getting the donations they used to get. All kinds of acts are cancelling and people I know say they won’t ever set foot in that place.

The problems with the Kennedy Center have nothing to do with anything that existed before the Trump takeover. The president is like an arsonist firefighter, setting things alight so he can “save” them.