{"id":2275,"date":"2026-06-26T06:35:56","date_gmt":"2026-06-26T06:35:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nextaddressamerica.com\/?p=2275"},"modified":"2026-06-26T06:35:56","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T06:35:56","slug":"trumps-brittle-attempt-at-art-propaganda-is-crumbling-opinion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nextaddressamerica.com\/?p=2275","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s ‘brittle’ attempt at art propaganda is crumbling: opinion"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

President Donald Trump\u2019s attempt to burnish his legacy through propaganda is crumbling all around him, according to a prominent editor.<\/p>\n

Read more Trump aides know he\u2019s nuts \u2014 but don\u2019t expect a fix<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201c… [C]compared with those of his predecessors, Donald Trump\u2019s cultural campaign is perhaps the most overt and visually distinct,\u201d wrote The Atlantic’s assistant editor Isabel Ruehl on Thursday after comparing Trump to the Soviet Communist Party and previous presidents like Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt and Richard Nixon. \u201cMemes aside\u2014his administration\u2019s social media has its own aesthetic\u2014Trump\u2019s architectural and design taste maximizes size, gilt, and jingoism, asserting the superiority of his administration above all that came before and all that will come after.\u201d<\/p>\n

She also used examples like The Independence Arch, whose nickname, \u2018Arc de Trump,\u2019 complete with gold-lettered inscriptions and gilded statues. <\/p>\n

“During his second term, he tacked his name onto the Kennedy Center and installed himself as chairman, declaring his \u2018Vision for a Golden Age in Arts and Culture\u2019; he razed the East Wing in favor of a ballroom, reportedly projected to cost about $600 million; he paved over the White House\u2019s Rose Garden so that it would look like Mar-a-Lago\u2019s beach club, featuring the same yellow-striped umbrellas; and his administration overhauled the selection process for the Venice Biennale, requiring American submissions to \u2018showcase American excellence.\u2019 (Trump\u2019s name was recently removed from the Kennedy Center after a federal judge ordered it, and a legal battle continues over whether the president has the authority to build the ballroom without congressional approval.)\u201d<\/p>\n

All of these efforts, Ruehl writes, have been unsuccessful in solidifying Trump\u2019s legacy, including Trump\u2019s attempt to put his name on the Kennedy Center, which ultimately failed, and his censorship of museums by trying to remove \u201cimproper ideology\u201d from its exhibits. Even though these efforts ultimately failed, they still display a desire to impose his personal philosophy on aesthetics and understanding history over the rest of the American public.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrump\u2019s influence over American art and museums has its limits,\u201d Ruehl explained. \u201cArtists have canceled shows at the Smithsonian and elsewhere, and some exhibits are sidestepping the president\u2019s war on DEI. In January, the National Museum of African Art opened a show by LGBTQ artists from Africa and the diaspora, and this month, an augmented-reality display on the National Mall tells the stories of five women who worked alongside the men monumented there.\u201d<\/p>\n

She added, \u201cAnd as my colleague Clint Smith recently reported, the leadership at the Smithsonian is holding steady\u2014for now. Lonnie Bunch, the 73-year-old secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, said in March that \u2018there is not a thing that I\u2019ve allowed to be changed at the Smithsonian.\u2019 (But as Clint notes, Bunch also \u2018appears to be inching closer\u2019 to leaving.) Meanwhile, the administration\u2019s threats linger, mostly in the form of withholding funding from museums and artists that do not obey its vision.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more The secret report in the White House drawer that could change everything in November<\/a><\/p>\n

Ultimately Ruehl refers back to the ideas of famous essayist George Orwell, who wrote that \u201cthe imagination, like certain wild animals, will not breed in captivity.\u201d She argues that \u201cfree expression in America has not been snuffed out, even when faced with political opposition in the past. But the Trump era is the latest test of just how much it can endure, and how it might evolve in response.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ruehl is not alone in criticizing Trump\u2019s taste and competence as a creative person. The New York Times revealed that Trump\u2019s attempt to renovate the Reflecting Pool has failed because of his cronyistic approach and incompetence.<\/p>\n

\u201cPresident Trump says the peeling blue coating and algae blooms that mar his $16.4 million renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool are the fault of vandals working with \u2018knives\u2019 in the \u2018dark of night,\u2019\u201d The New York Times\u2019 wrote Maxine Joselow and David A. Fahrenthold on Tuesday. \u201cBut government documents obtained by Times show that while National Park Service workers found two cuts in sections of foam between the pool\u2019s expansion joints, those were not directly related to the \u2018American flag blue\u2019 coating that is now peeling, or to the algae that has turned the pool a bright shade of green.\u201d<\/p>\n

In March, Trump\u2019s destruction of the White House\u2019s historic East Wing to build a ballroom also fell flat.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe hurried reviews, with construction cranes already swiveling above the White House grounds, are an abrupt departure from how new monuments, museums and even modest renovations have been designed and refined in the capital for decades,\u201d wrote Emily Badger, Junho Lee and Larry Buchanan of The New York Time Times. Many serious structural issues have emerged in the nascent structure because it is being rushed in the face of legal challenges.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the sprint to complete it before the end of his term, the addition appears to have compressed the normal design evolution for any project,\u201d the Times wrote. \u201cAs recently as October, the president was still increasing the ballroom\u2019s capacity, the kind of decision needed at the concept stage. And the White House has said it plans to begin building in the spring, a timeline that would mean construction documents would have to be prepared even as the design was still under review.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more White House source hounds Trump as \u2018demented old man with tacky tastes\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President Donald Trump\u2019s attempt to burnish his legacy through propaganda is crumbling all around him, according to a prominent editor.\u201c… [C]compared with those of his predecessors, Donald Trump\u2019s cultural campaign is perhaps the most overt and visually distinct,\u201d wrote The Atlantic’s assistant ed…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2274,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nTrump\u2019s 'brittle' attempt at art propaganda is crumbling: opinion - Next Address America<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/nextaddressamerica.com\/?p=2275\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Trump\u2019s 'brittle' attempt at art propaganda is crumbling: opinion - Next Address America\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"President Donald Trump\u2019s attempt to burnish his legacy through propaganda is crumbling all around him, according to a prominent editor.\u201c... 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