Whoopi Goldberg Won't Attend Kennedy Center Until It 'Becomes What Kennedy Center Was Always Supposed To Be'; Trump Appointee Calls ‘Hamilton' Withdrawal A 'Publicity Stunt'
The Kennedy Center just lost another patron. Whoopi Goldberg announced on today's The View that she will no longer attend Kennedy Center performances in light of the Donald Trump board takeover that has prompted a raft of changes at the venue including firings and show cancelations.
During today's Hot Topics segment of the ABC daytime talk show, Goldberg and the rest of the panel were discussing yesterday's announcement by Hamilton producers Jeffrey Seller and Lin-Manuel Miranda that they have scotched a planned 2026 Kennedy Center engagement of Miranda's hit musical. The decision, they said, was a response to the 'recent purge by the Trump Administration of both professional staff and performing arts events at or originally produced by the Kennedy Center…'
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Last night, Richard Grenell, the Trump-appointed interim executive director of the Kennedy Center, posted a response to the Hamilton producers on X, calling the cancelation 'a publicity stunt.'
'The American people,' Grenell wrote, 'need to know that @Lin_Manuel is intolerant of people who don't agree with him politically. It's clear he and Sellers [sic] don't want Republicans going to their shows. Americans see you, Lin. Let's be clear on the facts. Seller and @Lin_Manuel first went to the New York Times before they came to the Kennedy Center with their announcement that they can't be in the same room with Republicans. This is a publicity stunt that will backfire. The Arts are for everyone – not just for the people who Lin likes and agrees with.'
(In producer Seller's statement yesterday, he proactively countered Grenell's argument, writing, 'Hamilton was proudly performed at the Kennedy Center in 2018 during the first Trump administration. We are not acting against his administration, but against the partisan policies of the Kennedy Center as a result of his recent takeover.')
On today's View, the panel took up the subject, with Republican cohost Alyssa Farah Griffin bemoaning the end of bipartisanship at the Kennedy Center and Sunny Hostin noting, 'If you fire everyone [on the board] that was there, and it was a bipartisan group, and replace them with sycophants that are just going to toe the Trump line, is that really the mission of the Kennedy Center?'
Goldberg had a particularly strong reaction to the situation, saying that Trump's firing of the Center's previous bipartisan board 'was a big smack to the arts, which don't have a politics.'
Goldberg went on to suggest that Hamilton makes it statements with its nontraditional casting. 'Hamilton doesn't look like Hamilton,' she said.
'I have no plans to go back to the Kennedy Center until the Kennedy Center becomes what it was supposed to be – a welcome place for all artists no matter what your groove is.'
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