LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

Yesterday U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper of the District of Columbia refused to permit the Kennedy Center board, stacked by Trump with his own loyalists, to return Trump’s name to the facade of the building. Cooper reiterated that Congress had prohibited such an addition and would have to change that law in order to make the addition of Trump’s name legal. The board of the Kennedy Center promptly appealed and voted to close the venue for two years for renovations. Then Trump posted on social media that those renovations couldn’t take place unless the court approved the addition of his name to the building. Without that, he posted, “unfortunately, the Building is destined to doom. Isn’t that too bad?” Although the Kennedy Center board insisted that only Trump’s name on the building would restore donations, in fact, the Washington Post reports that ticket sales and fundraising plunged when Trump added his name to the building in the first place. Nonetheless, Trump posted that he is the only one who can save it, “because I have the ability to raise the money, and the ability to construct—that few others have. I also have the strength and power of the Presidency, which will be needed [to] do what must be done, and give it a strong shot at Greatness again!” As George Conway of the Bulwark noted, “To destroy things he can’t possess or control is his essential nature.” It is also as if Trump is self-soothing by celebrating his core identity even as his incompetence and greed have driven the United States, and the world, into crisis. But even that is not providing him comfort these days. Representative Joyce Beatty (D-OH), an ex-officio member of the Kennedy Center board and the member who sued over his takeover of the center, explained to Symone Sanders-Townsend of MS NOW that Trump called into the board meeting after the court decision and “went into a tantrum.” While most people appear to have refused to confront Trump to his face—Maine governor Janet Mills’s “W…