Whoopi Goldberg took the Kennedy Center fight to a new level Wednesday, comparing President Donald Trump’s effort to have his name displayed at the performing arts center to putting his name on John F. Kennedy’s grave.
During ABC’s The View, Goldberg mocked Trump’s continued battle over the Washington institution and questioned why the president was spending political capital on the dispute.
“This is somebody else’s memorial,” Goldberg said, before making the comparison to Kennedy’s grave and telling Trump to “go to work.”
The analogy is dramatic, but it skips over a fairly important distinction: the Kennedy Center isn’t JFK’s grave. It is a functioning federal cultural institution with a governing board, hundreds of millions of dollars in planned renovations, and an active legal dispute over what that board is authorized to do.
Congress designated the center as a memorial to Kennedy, and that distinction matters legally. U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper ruled again Tuesday that the board cannot add a memorial or inscription honoring Trump without congressional authorization. The administration is challenging that interpretation.
That is a substantive fight over federal law and institutional authority. Goldberg’s graveyard analogy turns it into something considerably simpler and more emotionally charged.
There is also more to the renovation dispute than The View exchange suggested. The Kennedy Center board voted to close the main building for a major renovation after officials cited serious structural and financial problems. Congress has already appropriated roughly $257 million for the work. Trump has said the renovation will not proceed if courts ultimately prevent the proposed recognition of him, while critics argue he is improperly tying the future of a national institution to having his name displayed there.
Goldberg is hardly alone in criticizing Trump over that position. Rep. Joyce Beatty, the Democrat whose lawsuit produced the court orders, argues that only Congress can authorize such a change and has accused Trump of putting personal recognition ahead of the Kennedy Center. The federal judge has so far agreed with the core of her legal argument.
But Goldberg’s comparison still substitutes provocation for the actual dispute.
Nobody is proposing to alter Kennedy’s grave. Nobody is suggesting erasing Kennedy from the institution bearing his name. The fight is over whether Trump can be formally recognized on a building that remains, by statute, a memorial to JFK, and whether the Kennedy Center board has the legal power to do it without Congress.
There are plenty of arguments to make against Trump’s position. Comparing an inscription on a performing arts center to putting his name on the grave of an assassinated president is certainly punchier television. It just isn’t a particularly precise description of what is actually happening.