The image, taken as Trump returned from an event in North Carolina, showed the president seated with a large printed display bearing the center's name and the word "Demolish" above pictures of construction equipment inside a shell of the vast building. He was accompanied by Bill Pulte, the chairman of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, who is known for pitching Trump on ambitious ideas using visual displays.
The photograph followed remarks Trump made upon arriving in Charlotte, where he complained about a federal court judge who had again blocked his name from appearing on the center after renovations. "I think that the Trump administration should certainly have recognition because, frankly, if we don't do that, it's going to close. It'll end up being ripped down," Trump said. He described the building as being "in very, very bad shape, very dangerous shape," citing falling steel and plaster coming off ceilings, and said it had been "very badly maintained for 25 years."
The center's mostly Trump-appointed board voted Tuesday to close the main building after plaster fell from the ceiling of the grand foyer following a heavy rainstorm in Washington. The acting president and executive director, Matt Floca, confirmed he had ordered the building closed for at least seven days beginning Wednesday because of "acute risks to public safety resulting from continued structural deterioration."
Fencing has already gone up around the building and willow trees surrounding it were recently cut down, even though the Kennedy Center is known to contain asbestos. In a court filing Wednesday, Bridget Kennedy-Bailey, a member of the legal team opposing Trump's Kennedy Center efforts, swore that she saw a forklift "run into and hit the pillars on the building several times."
The demolition review also echoes Trump's removal of the White House's East Wing over three days this past October, carried out without advance public notice to make way for a new ballroom project.
The dispute over the building's identity has been running for months. At Trump's request, Congress approved $257 million last year to refresh the facility, and the president began making site visits and reviewing marble centers. Progress stalled over a fight about adding Trump's name alongside that of the late President John F. Kennedy. The board voted last December to rebrand the site as the Trump-Kennedy Center in recognition of the incumbent leader's interest in improving it, but the idea and associated signage on the facade were rejected by US District Judge Christopher Cooper.
On Tuesday, Cooper also rejected a subsequent proposal to rename the area around the center "Trump Plaza" and to add the words "Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump" to the building. "Simply put, Defendants cannot install memorials for President Trump or anyone or anything else at the Kennedy Center without Congress's blessing," wrote Cooper, an appointee of former President Barack Obama.
The Kennedy Center opened its doors in 1971, having been renamed after the assassinated 35th president by an act of Congress in 1964.