President Trump was photographed reviewing demolition plans for the Kennedy Center aboard Air Force One on Wednesday night.
The image, captured by a photographer after a North Carolina event, shows Trump seated with Bill Pulte, 42, the chairman of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, examining a large poster board bearing the center’s name and the word “Demolish” above images of construction equipment inside the building’s shell. Pulte is known for pitching Trump ambitious ideas using visual displays.
The photo surfaced roughly four hours after Trump lashed out at a federal judge for blocking his name from appearing on the center following 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 upon arriving in Charlotte.
“It’s in very, very bad shape, very dangerous shape. You see steel falling down. You see plaster falling off ceilings. You see a lot of dangers. It’s been very badly maintained for 25 years,” he continued.
The president’s own appointees on the center’s board had voted Tuesday to close the main building after plaster fell from the ceiling of the grand foyer following heavy rain in Washington. Matt Floca, the center’s acting president and executive director, confirmed he ordered the closure for at least seven days beginning Wednesday due to “acute risks to public safety resulting from continued structural deterioration.”
Bridget Kennedy-Bailey, a member of the legal team opposing Trump’s Kennedy Center efforts, swore in a court filing Wednesday that she witnessed a forklift “run into and hit the pillars on the building several times.”
Trump had already demolished the White House’s East Wing over three days this past October without advance public notice, making way for a new ballroom project. Fencing has gone up around the Kennedy Center and willow trees surrounding it were recently cut down, though the building is known to contain asbestos.
The naming dispute has stalled renovation progress 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 samples. The board voted last December to rebrand as the Trump-Kennedy Center, but US District Judge Christopher Cooper, an Obama appointee, rejected the facade signage.
Cooper on Tuesday also blocked a subsequent proposal to rename the surrounding area “Trump Plaza” and 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,” Cooper wrote.
The center opened in 1971 and was renamed after the assassinated 35th president by an act of Congress in 1964.
The White House has indicated it will submit ballroom plans for review even as demolition work is already under way elsewhere on the complex.