Kennedy Center President Deborah F. Rutter, brought on by Rubenstein in 2014, resigned soon after the board shake-up. Trump replaced her, on an interim basis, with diplomat Richard Grenell, who served as the U.S. ambassador to Germany during the president's first term.

Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Trump undertook a "massive overhaul" of the Kennedy Center in the weeks after his inauguration, said USA Today. He fired board members who had been appointed by the Biden Administration,

The president doesn’t merely want to break the government bureaucracy. He wants to reprogram what the arts mean to the American people.

For the arts institution, which receives only a small portion of its budget from federal funding, the perennial challenge is to raise additional revenue through ticket sales and private donations.

After mostly steering clear of the national cultural center during his first term, Trump has moved quickly to take control as he returns to office.

What will a thin-skinned showman do with an institution central to Washington’s cultural life? One expectation is more country music.