Mary Trump: Trump Renamed The Kennedy Center For 1 Reason, And It’s A ‘Tragedy’
· Yahoo NewsMary Trump is pushing her “contempt” aside to offer a pretty compassionate — albeit sad — reason for why President Donald Trump slaps “his name on everything.”
During Thursday’s episode of the Daily Beast’s podcast, host Joanna Coles asked Trump’s niece — who is a psychologist and outspoken critic of her uncle’s politics — about why she thinks the president decided to change the name of the Kennedy Center to the Trump-Kennedy Center. The Kennedy Center was named in honor of President John F. Kennedy in 1964, months after his November 1963 assassination.
“I’m trying to contain my contempt,” Mary Trump prefaced, calling the move “obscene” and “illegal” by noting that in order to actually change the name of the institution, it needs to be approved by Congress.
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“Also, last I checked, you’re not really supposed to be naming things after living presidents, current or former,” she added.
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Mary Trump then pivoted to give her opinion on why her uncle decided to change the name.
“He wants to turn every public space in America into some version of WWE or Ultimate Fighting,” she said, referring to the president’s taste in culture. “And it is just grotesque that he thinks that somehow this legitimizes him or gives him the same stature and standing as somebody like President Kennedy. But that’s partially why he’s doing it — for himself.”
She continued, “But here’s the thing, it’s never going to be enough. Ever.”
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Mary Trump said she believes the president “is constantly trying to fill a void that cannot be filled” thanks to his upbringing and his early relationship with his parents.
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“And the reason is actually pretty simple: Even though Donald was the preferred child of my grandfather — and by preferred I mean most useful to him, the most useful in advancing his own agenda — my grandfather and my grandmother rendered Donald unlovable,” Mary Trump said.
“The only thing, the thing he most desperately wants in his life, is to be loved. He never has been sufficiently. He never will be. That is an impossible thing for him to achieve.”
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She said that the reason Trump puts “his name on everything,” from steaks to Bibles and buildings (some of which he doesn’t even own), is “all in service to filling a black hole that is unfillable.”
“And I think if we can take a step back and detach ourselves from the horrors this man has committed and continues to commit, that is a tragedy. It is a tragedy to say about another human being. I’m not saying we should care about him or have any compassion for him. I have a lot of compassion for that child, though.”
She continued: “Because his needs will never be met, and he can never grapple with them in a real way because he is just a terrified little boy who cannot face the truth about himself, all of us are suffering,” she said.
When Coles asked Mary Trump if she thinks her uncle is “conscious” of this, she responded by saying he likely isn’t, “but he certainly understands it on a deep, unconscious level.”
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“And that’s why so much of his psychic and emotional energy is spent protecting himself from that knowledge. It’s a full-time job,” she said.
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Mary Trump emphasized how “obscene” it was that someone as uncultured as her uncle wants his name emblazoned upon a center for the arts. Earlier in the interview, Mary Trump recalled spending holidays at her grandparents’ house in a room the family called “the library.”
“And, yes, it was called the library, but it had no books in it until [Donald Trump’s 1987 book] ‘Art of the Deal’ was published,” she said.
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She also emphasized that Kennedy’s relationship with the arts was profoundly different from that of her uncle.
“If you look at some of the things that President Kennedy had to say about the importance of the arts and what we should aspire to as a country — many of those quotes etched on the facade of that building — it just underscores how egregious this is,” Mary Trump said. “Donald cares nothing for the arts. He and his administration have underfunded or defunded them.”
She has a point. The Trump administration has moved to eliminate federal funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
“I look forward to an America …which will reward achievement in the arts as we reward achievement in business or statecraft,” one of Kennedy’s quotes etched into the Kennedy Center reads. “I look forward to an America which will steadily raise the standards of artistic accomplishment and which will steadily enlarge cultural opportunities for all of our citizens. And I look forward to an America which commands respect throughout the world not only for its strength but for its civilization as well.”