Trump Chairs First Kennedy Center Board Meeting: “$250 Million” Wasted, “Tremendous Disrepair,” $30K to Move a Piano

President Trump attended his first board meeting as Chairman of the Kennedy Center Board of Trustees in March 2025 and delivered a blunt assessment of the institution’s condition. “It’s in tremendous disrepair, as is a lot of the rest of our country — most of it because of bad management,” Trump said. He revealed that the center had spent $250 million building underground rooms “that nobody’s going to use,” that moving a piano for Lee Greenwood to sing at the board meeting would have cost $30,000 due to union rules, and that exterior columns that were supposed to be covered in marble had simply been painted. “It’s really emblematic of our country,” Trump declared, connecting the Kennedy Center’s decay to the broader national malaise he was elected to fix.

”Tremendous Disrepair”

Trump opened the board meeting with the candor of a real estate developer surveying a property for the first time.

“We’re here to have our first board meeting,” Trump said. “Kennedy Center and its tremendous disrepair. As is a lot of the rest of our country. Most of it because of bad management. This is a shame what I’ve watched and witnessed.”

The personal element was notable. Trump acknowledged that he had not visited the center in a long time: “I’ve been so busy. I haven’t been able to be here in a long time. And I shouldn’t be with what I’m doing. But I thought it was important because I’ve been hearing reports and I thought it was very important to make this good.”

He expressed surprise at the state of disrepair: “I’m so surprised because, you know, I know the person who was in charge of it. And he’s a good man. I never realized this was in such bad shape.”

The assessment was significant coming from Trump. Whatever one thought of his politics, his career in real estate and property management had given him a professional eye for building condition, construction quality, and maintenance standards. When he said the Kennedy Center was in “tremendous disrepair,” it was not a casual observation but a professional evaluation from someone who had built and maintained luxury properties for decades.

”$250 Million” and Rooms Nobody Will Use

Trump zeroed in on what he characterized as the most egregious example of misspent money: the Kennedy Center’s expansion project.

“They spent a fortune — $250 million,” Trump said. “And they built these rooms that nobody’s going to use. Rooms underground.”

He had noticed the architectural evidence from the outside: “And I’ve often wondered, what are the big cubes that they have outside that block the view? The cubes with the door in them so that people can get down to rooms that nobody’s going to use. And it’s a shame. It’s a shame.”

The critique was specific and grounded in observation. The REACH expansion, completed in 2019, had added 72,000 square feet of below-grade space to the Kennedy Center. Trump’s argument was not that expansion was unnecessary but that the specific design — windowless underground rooms accessed through structures that obstructed the views from the original building — represented a waste of $250 million.

“They built rooms underground with no windows, no nothing, that will not be used ever,” Trump said. “You’re not going to have people use them. It’s such a waste of money, such a terrible waste.”

The criticism reflected Trump’s instincts as a developer. Underground rooms without windows violated the fundamental principle of attractive, usable space. No matter how much money was spent on them, spaces that people did not want to occupy were, by definition, wasted investment.

$30,000 to Move a Piano

The anecdote that generated the most attention was Trump’s revelation about union costs at the Kennedy Center.

“I’m going to have a little problem with some people that work here,” Trump said. “We had Lee Greenwood wanted to sing a little song today. And because of the cost and the union structure, for him to sing a song just for the board — it’s the board meeting — it was going to cost $30,000.”

He let the number land. “That doesn’t sound too good. They wanted $30,000 to move a piano.”

The $30,000 piano anecdote was instantly memorable because it compressed a complex argument about institutional dysfunction into a single, concrete example. The Kennedy Center, a publicly funded institution, had a cost structure so bloated that a singer could not perform a song at a board meeting without triggering $30,000 in union fees. The number was not a construction cost or an annual budget figure — it was the price of moving a piano from one part of the building to another.

“So you can’t have that,” Trump said simply. “So we’re going to fix it up.”

Painted Columns and the Maintenance Deficit

Trump drew attention to a detail that captured the gap between the Kennedy Center’s intended grandeur and its actual condition.

“At the Kennedy Center, if you look at the columns outside, you look at — I mean, they’re supposed to be covered by something, whether it’s marble or whatever, granite,” Trump said. “They were never covered. They were painted.”

The revelation that the exterior columns had been painted rather than clad in the stone originally specified was, for Trump, evidence of a long-running pattern of cutting corners while pretending to maintain standards. The columns looked like marble from a distance but were, upon closer inspection, a painted facade — a metaphor that Trump did not need to spell out.

“Bringing it to more modern times, a lot of money’s been given to it,” Trump continued. “And the money has not been properly spent.”

The broader building maintenance issues extended beyond the Kennedy Center itself. “And we’re going to spend it on fixing up,” Trump said. “We don’t want graffiti on the beautiful white statuary marble. And we want to have our roads good and everything else. We’ll be able to do that easily."

"Emblematic of Our Country”

Trump made the rhetorical move that elevated the Kennedy Center story from a facilities management discussion to a political metaphor.

“It’s really emblematic of our country,” he said.

He then drew explicit connections between the Kennedy Center’s dysfunction and the broader national problems he was addressing: “It is so much like what I’m witnessing in other places. We have open borders. We have men playing in women’s sports. It’s all the same thing. It’s all the same mentality and thinking.”

The link was not arbitrary. In Trump’s framing, the same management philosophy that had produced $250 million underground rooms nobody would use, $30,000 piano-moving fees, and painted columns masquerading as marble had also produced open borders, cultural confusion, and institutional decay across the country. The problem was not specific to the Kennedy Center — it was systemic. Bad management, waste, and the prioritization of appearances over substance had become the default mode of American institutions.

The Path Forward

Trump concluded with a commitment to restoration.

“But we’ll bring it back. We’ll make it great again,” he said. “The bottom line, it has tremendous potential. And we’ll work with Congress. You know, it’s a very public, a very public facility. And we’ll do what has to be done.”

He announced plans to engage congressional leadership: “We’ll be having a meeting with the speaker in the not too distant future. I think it’s important to save this structure and this building.”

The Kennedy Center board meeting had served as a microcosm of the Trump governing philosophy: identify waste, name it publicly, connect it to broader dysfunction, and commit to fixing it. The building that bore John F. Kennedy’s name would, in Trump’s telling, be restored to the standard that name deserved.

Key Takeaways

• Trump chaired his first Kennedy Center board meeting and called the facility in “tremendous disrepair” due to “bad management.”
• He criticized $250 million spent on underground rooms “with no windows, no nothing, that will not be used ever.”
• The most memorable detail: Lee Greenwood could not sing at the meeting because union rules required $30,000 to move a piano.
• Trump revealed that exterior columns meant to be marble or granite “were never covered — they were painted.”
• He called the Kennedy Center’s dysfunction “emblematic of our country” and pledged to work with Congress to restore it: “We’ll make it great again.”