Board members at the Kennedy Center didn't just hear from each other before voting to shutter the institution—they also reportedly got an earful from President Trump. Two sources tell CNN that the commander in chief phoned into Tuesday's tense meeting and angrily confronted Rep. Joyce Beatty, the Democratic lawmaker whose lawsuit has blocked efforts to put his name on the building, with one describing the exchange as "f---ing crazy." Sources say Trump shouted that Beatty's legal challenge had helped sink the performing arts center, while Beatty shot back that he'd driven it deep into debt.
Trump called Beatty "incompetent" and claimed she was "holding up everything," per the AP—to which Beatty retorted, "You're holding up the whole country." A White House spokesperson added that "Trump-deranged Dumocrats like Joyce Beatty oppose anything that celebrates the greatness of our country because they put America last." Beatty, for her part, later said in a NewsNation interview that Trump "found it necessary to go into what he does—name-calling," per the Hill.
"He has a limited vocabulary, so, you know, he knows words like 'dumb' ... and things like that," Beatty said. "I was surprised that the board people let it go on. So, we had some exchange of words." The clash came just after a federal judge halted the board's latest attempt to add an inscription and rename the campus for Trump, ruling that the plan violated both a prior court order and federal law.
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