From cops to the Kennedy Center, Trump tries to transform Washington

CNN

19 hours ago

An emboldened President Donald Trump is increasingly using his bully pulpit to stamp his imprint on Washington, DC — pushing the bounds of executive power to reshape a city that once snubbed him.
Trump in his first seven months has sought extraordinary control over key cultural institutions, taking over leadership of the Kennedy Center and demanding changes to Smithsonian museums that align with his political beliefs. He's slashed the size of the federal workforce, moved to sell off government buildings and embarked on a pricey White House renovation that will make the world's most famous address more closely resemble another one of his private clubs.
And in an unprecedented move triggered by his own gripes with DC government, Trump has taken control of the city's police force and sent a surge of federal law enforcement into streets.
The moves reflect the president's long held desire to put his mark on the nation's capital and solidify his legacy in monumental ways before passing the MAGA torch onto a successor.
White House officials and close allies of the president told CNN that Trump's decision to prioritize these actions boils down to one underlying point: He believes winning the 2024 election delivered him a mandate to impose his influence on a city he has long viewed as being captured by Democrats and liberal elites.
'He is far more confident this term than when he first came to Washington. He is self-assured in his decisions, and he is far more willing to take risks,' a person close to Trump told CNN.
One White House official put it this way: 'After 2021, everyone counted him for dead,' adding that Trump won a series of legal cases and clawed his way back to the top. He now feels liberated.
'A lot of what is driving his agenda stems from the fact he believes he was given a mandate in '24,' the official added. 'Now he is enacting.'
A key difference in Trump's second-term approach to DC stems from whom he surrounds himself with.
During his first term, Trump deferred several decisions to the aides he placed in the West Wing, many of whom worked tirelessly to counteract what they viewed as him following through on his worst impulses. Struggling to manage the competing factions within his White House and broader GOP, he notably shied away from engaging with a city whose residents had roundly rejected him. (Trump won just 4% of the vote in DC in 2016, followed by 5% in 2020 and 7% in 2024.)
Trump declined to participate in the traditional tentpole events of official Washington, like the Kennedy Center Honors and White House Correspondents Dinner. He rarely ventured off the White House grounds during the week — aside from some visits to his local Trump Hotel — and spent as many weekends as possible in the friendlier confines of his clubs in Florida and New Jersey.
This time around, Trump has maintained his aversion to visiting the city's establishments, outside of a few trips to the Kennedy Center to discuss his planned changes to the building and its honorees. But from within the Oval Office, he's devoted increasing energy to putting his mark on the few square miles around him — urged on by a new set of staffers that, rather than acting as gatekeepers, have encouraged him to act on asserting his influence on Washington.
'He's got loyal people around him now,' said one Trump adviser. 'And he realizes the power that he has and the things that he can do.'
Trump's decision to declare a crime emergency and federalize DC's police force is a prime example. The president previously considered invoking the Home Rule Act of 1973 during the 2020 protests following the murder of George Floyd, but had been convinced not to do so, a source familiar with his decision said.
Yet when Trump weighed the idea again in recent weeks, his closest advisers, like his deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller, argued doing so was his prerogative. The president's announcement on Monday, during which he vowed to 'restore the city back to the gleaming capital that everybody wants it to be,' was a result of a long-simmering belief that the federal government was required to step in and clean up DC.
Two White House officials told CNN that much of that belief stems from Trump's dismay while traveling in his motorcade and seeing homeless tents and graffiti scattered through the city. A day before announcing the crackdown, Trump posted a series of photos of homeless encampments and roadside debris on Truth Social that appeared to be taken from his motorcade as it sped by.
The attempted carjacking of administration staffer Edward Coristine earlier this month provided additional justification, with Trump posting a photo of the bloodied Coristine as evidence that crime had spiraled out of control.
But the president — who friends note rose to prominence in New York City during its crime surge in the 1980s and '90s — had also complained about those issues long before he retook office.
'We will take over the horribly run capital of our nation in Washington, D.C. and clean it up, renovate it, rebuild our capital city, so there's no longer a nightmare of murder and crime,' then-candidate Trump said during a campaign rally in Atlanta in August 2024.
The surge of federal agents in DC triggered immediate backlash, with Democrats decrying it as an unprecedented power grab meant to distract from challenges that the White House is facing elsewhere. There are early signs, too, that Trump's hardline actions across the country are already wearing thin with some voters; a Pew Research Center poll released Thursday showed sharp declines in his approval rating among younger Americans and minorities.
But Trump and his aides have leaned into the controversy, betting that it will benefit them with a broad base of voters who prioritize public safety — and feel that crime is on the rise in cities like DC, even if it's not reflected in the data.
'I could see where federalizing the police ends up permanent,' said one person close to the White House, noting Democrats' early struggles to coalesce behind an effective response. 'There's plenty more than can be done.'
The president said Wednesday he wants Congressional Republicans to work on a crime bill that could extend his federal takeover of DC beyond the 30 days the Home Rule Act allows him. (Such a measure would be unlikely to pass the Senate, where it would need 60 votes to advance.)
Trump and his allies have made a similar effort to take over and remake DC's cultural and historical institutions, casting their focus on the Kennedy Center and Smithsonian museums as part of a broader project to rid them of liberal bias and 'wokeness.'
While Trump during his first term only occasionally dipped into the culture war issues that have long animated the broader MAGA base, he's since made them core to his agenda — convinced that he can capitalize politically by presenting himself as a 'common sense' bulwark against progressives who he sees as having taken over key institutions.
'I think he's intuited the importance of the culture war,' said Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation who has written extensively in favor of overhauling cultural institutions. 'Washington is full of places that need to be rescued from the clutches of the left.'
When announcing the Kennedy Center's 2025 honorees on Wednesday, Trump made clear that he controlled the selection process.
'I would say I was about 98% involved. They all went through me,' Trump said of the picks, which included country music star George Strait; actors Michael Crawford and Sylvester Stallone; singer Gloria Gaynor; and the rock band KISS.
He added that throughout the process, 'I turned down plenty. They were too woke, I had a couple of wokesters. … The Kennedy Center has everything. Look at the Academy Awards, it gets lousy ratings now, it's all woke. All they do is talk about how much they hate Trump. but nobody likes that. They don't watch anymore.'
He also announced that he would be hosting the awards ceremony in December, relishing his chance to once again command a televised event nearly a decade after his reality television show, 'The Apprentice,' went off the air.
It was the latest assertion of authority over a once-bipartisan institution that has since become a partisan flashpoint. In recent months, Republican lawmakers have proposed renaming the Kennedy Center after Trump, and its opera house after first lady Melania Trump.
Trump is also eager to oversee a series of milestone events during his second term.
'We're going to do something that's going to be incredible. We're going to use the Kennedy Center as a big focus of it, and that's the 250th anniversary celebration that we're having,' Trump said, nodding to America's birthday in 2026, an event that the Trump administration has already spent months planning to mark the occasion.
He also pointed to the FIFA World Cup and the Olympics, which will be hosted in the United States in 2026 and 2028, respectively, both of which are major feathers in Trump's cap for his presidential legacy.
Indeed, Trump has increasingly fixated on the landmark events as key opportunities to cement his legacy and show off the US to the rest of the world, according to people who have spoken to him.
The president in private conversations has repeatedly marveled at his luck, musing that he wouldn't have presided over America's 250th anniversary if he'd won reelection 2020 — even as he insists, without evidence, that race was rigged against him. And he has emphasized the need for DC to be a welcoming place for tourists during the 2026 celebration, at times suggesting that the push to reduce crime and 'beautify' the city is linked to the event.
'The president's crazy about America 250 — he's really focused on this,' said the person close to the White House, characterizing Trump's view as of DC as 'in disrepair, which makes it a bummer to visit. And if you're going to get mugged while you're there, why would you come?'
The White House also invoked the anniversary event in its letter to the Smithsonian Institution secretary pushing for DC museums to ensure they 'reflect the unity, progress, and enduring values that define the American story.'
That internal review — led by a trio of top White House officials — will examine exhibits and materials at eight Smithsonian museums to determine what should and shouldn't be displayed.
It comes after Trump signed an executive order earlier this year of accusing the museums of having 'come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology' that has 'promoted narratives that portray American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive.'
Vice President JD Vance, a leader among the conservative movement to retake cultural institutions from the left, was put in charge of stopping government spending on 'exhibits or programs that degrade shared American values.'
'We want the museums to treat our country fairly,' Trump said Thursday, pushing back on accusations that the administration is rewriting history to suit its political narrative.
Beyond the museums, Trump also hopes to transform the city's actual landscape. He said Wednesday he wanted to 'redo the grass with the finest grasses,' a topic he knows well from owning golf courses.
'We're going to also fix up a place called Washington, DC,' he said. 'We're going to make it so beautiful again.'