Latest news with #MattSchlapp
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
MAGA hits limits in its global ambitions
When top figures in President Donald Trump's orbit descended on a small town in southeastern Poland this week to rally support for the right-wing candidate in that country's presidential election on Sunday, they put MAGA's ambitions abroad on full display. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem called Karol Nawrocki 'just as strong a leader' as Trump, declaring 'he needs to to be the next president of Poland.' Matt Schlapp, chair of the pro-Trump Conservative Political Action Conference, which hosted the gathering, said electing candidates like Nawrocki is 'so important to the freedom of people everywhere,' while John Eastman, who aided Trump's effort to overturn the 2020 election, said Poland under Nawrocki would play 'a critical role in defeating [the] threat to Western civilization.' But if the conservative confab ahead of Poland's vote was an indication of how hard Trump's allies have been working to expand the MAGA brand across the globe, the results of recent elections, including in Romania, Poland and Canada, suggest Trump's influence in some cases may not be helping. 'Just like domestically, you see one step forward, two steps back sometimes,' said Matthew Bartlett, a GOP strategist and State Department appointee in Trump's first administration. 'The thought of Trump and MAGA is sometimes more powerful than the reality.' He said, 'His thumbprint can help push in certain regions and countries, but there can also be some pushback.' Trump's election to a second term in November emboldened far-right movements abroad. It gave Trump's allies hopes of putting like-minded leaders into positions of power, boosting parties that share his priorities and spreading his populist, hard-right politics beyond the U.S. Meanwhile, conservative politicians in other countries yoked themselves directly or stylistically to his brand. In the months since, far-right parties have performed strongly in European elections, including in Poland, Romania and Portugal, overperforming expectations and elevating their vote shares with electorates shifting to the right on issues like immigration. The hard-right in Europe, by most accounts, is surging. But they're not vaulting into government like some Trump allies had predicted. 'I wouldn't say the right has ascended, I'd say it's a mixed package,' said Kurt Volker, who served as Trump's envoy for Ukraine during his first administration and ambassador to NATO under George W. Bush. 'There is a movement effect where the far-right movements seem to draw energy from each other and do well. But there's also this anti-Trump effect, where Trump has challenged a country or a leader and that has only backfired and helped them.' In Romania, hard-right presidential candidate George Simion, who spoke at this year's CPAC in Washington and appeared on Trump ally Steve Bannon's podcast just days before the country's election this month, lost to a centrist challenger after dominating the first round of voting. In Albania, conservatives hired former Trump co-campaign manager Chris LaCivita to boost their fortunes, only to see their candidate get trounced anyway. And the movement is bracing for a close election on Sunday in Poland, where Nawrocki — who visited the White House earlier this month — is locked in a tight race with centrist candidate Rafal Trzaskowski after finishing behind him in the first round. 'We have a lot of political leaders here in the U.S. who are camping out in Poland to try to tilt it,' said Randy Evans, who was ambassador to Luxembourg during Trump's first term. 'Whether or not that's enough or not … I don't know. I think it's going to be very close.' Trump's allies have been working since his first term to expand MAGA's influence abroad. Bannon, who had managed Trump's 2016 campaign, began traveling across Europe pitching himself as the mastermind behind a new global far-right alliance called 'The Movement.' He even announced he would set up an academy to train future right-wing political leaders at a former monastery outside Rome. Those efforts largely fizzled at the time: Bannon's planned academy got caught up in yearslong legal battles, and support for far-right parties across the continent tanked in the early months of the coronavirus pandemic. But rising inflation and growing concerns over immigration helped far-right parties gain back support as the pandemic faded. By the time Trump won the election last November, many of those parties were resurging — and his victory emboldened them further, with far-right allies quickly seeking to tie themselves to the incoming U.S. president and his orbit. When Vice President JD Vance chastised European leaders for 'running in fear of [their] own voters' at the Munich Security Conference in February, he billed the Trump administration as an alternative model — the vanguard of a hard-right movement not only in the United States, but across the West. 'Make Europe Great Again! MEGA, MEGA, MEGA,' Elon Musk, Donald Trump's billionaire ally, posted on X earlier this year. In the months since the vice president's appearance in Germany, hardline conservatives have had some success. In Portugal, the far-right Chega party surged. And Reform UK, the party led by pro-Brexit leader Nigel Farage, made big gains in the country's local elections earlier this month. CPAC, which has been holding international conferences since 2017 — including in Japan, Australia, Brazil and Argentina — gathered supporters in Hungary following the Poland meeting this week. Schlapp did not respond to a request for comment. But he told NPR, 'The one thing that's undeniable is that everybody wants to know where Donald Trump is on the issues that matter to their country' and said, 'They're really rooting for Donald Trump to succeed.' But elsewhere abroad, MAGA-style politics not only has failed to spread — it has been a liability. In both Canada and Australia, Trump's combative and unpredictable trade policy led to an anti-Trump wave that helped tank right-wing candidates who sought to emulate his rhetoric. Canada's Pierre Poilievre ran on a 'Canada First' slogan and Australia's Peter Dutton proposed DOGE-style cuts to government. But Trump's tariffs were deeply unpopular with voters in both countries, and even though Poilievre and Dutton distanced themselves from Trump in the final days of the campaign, voters punished them anyway. Vance's speech in February 'gave the impression that this is becoming a transatlantic right-wing alliance,' said Liana Fix, a fellow for Europe at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington. 'Since then, the reality is … not as drastic as those worst-case scenarios. And that's not because they're not trying. You see how the White House is trying.' Trump's allies went all-in on the May 18 election in Romania, which was the re-run of a November vote annulled over concerns that a Russian influence campaign on TikTok had affected the outcome. Trump allies had criticized the decision to cancel the original results and bar the winning candidate, ultranationalist Călin Georgescu, from running in the new election. MAGA loyalists spent months touting Simion, the hard-right candidate who promised to 'Make Romania Great Again.' Less than two weeks before Election Day, Simion hosted CPAC's Schlapp at a business roundtable in Bucharest, and two days before Romanian voters cast their ballots, Bannon hosted Simion on his 'War Room' podcast. 'George, you've got the entire MAGA movement here in the United States pulling for you,' Bannon said, predicting victory for the Trump-aligned candidate. But when the votes were counted, it wasn't even close. Simion lost the election by 7 points to Bucharest Mayor Nicușor Dan, a centrist candidate who promised closer ties with the European Union and NATO. In Albania's May 11 parliamentary elections, where the conservative candidate, Sali Berisha, hired LaCivita to help his party make a political comeback, the party in interviews heralded Trump and Berisha's 'remarkably similar profiles' of being 'persecuted by establishments' and 'targeted by their countries' justice systems.' Berisha's supporters touted LaCivita's involvement as proof Berisha was anointed by the MAGA movement. But on Election Day, Berisha's party lost badly, handing incumbent Edi Rama and his Socialist Party another term in office. Rama wasted no time in gloating: Hiring Trump's campaign strategist and thinking you can become Trump 'is like hiring a Hollywood hairdresser and thinking you'll become Brad Pitt,' he told POLITICO after the vote. LaCivita told POLITICO on Friday that the connection between MAGA in the U.S. and conservative movements abroad stems from a common concern about an 'alignment of issues — governments using their judicial systems to prosecute political opponents, the rising cost of living, reduced opportunities and individual liberties.' 'This alignment was defeated with President Trump's win in 2024, and while that success may not always be repeated worldwide — once again America is being looked at to provide leadership in securing freedom,' he said in a text message. 'Not through the barrel of a gun — but politics.' Trump spokesperson Anna Kelly said in a statement that Trump's 'message of restoring common sense, halting illegal immigration, and delivering peace resonates with not just Americans, but people around the world, which is why conservatives have been winning elections in all corners of the globe. He is simultaneously restoring America's strength on the world stage, as evidenced by the 15 foreign leaders who have visited the White House this term.' Meanwhile, Trump's allies have largely dismissed defeats abroad, with explanations ranging from blaming the 'deep state' to arguing that losing politicians were not sufficiently Trumpian to win. "MAGA's populist, nationalist, sovereignist right continues to rise despite the full force of the deep state being thrown against it,' Bannon told POLITICO in response to the spate of recent elections. 'These people aren't Donald Trump. They're facsimiles,' Raheem Kassam, a former Farage adviser and ex-Breitbart London editor, said of Simion and Nawrocki, noting that their parties are both part of a faction on the European level that has its roots more in traditional conservatism than the MAGA-style populism of far-right parties in Germany, Austria, France and others. 'They're cheap copies that have been run through a copy machine 40 times,' he added. 'It doesn't work. It's faded. It's counterfeit Trumpism.' Poland, where leaders of the right-wing Law and Justice Party have long cultivated ties to Trump and MAGA loyalists, will offer the next test of whether an affiliation with Trump can help put like-minded candidates over the finish line. Nawrocki, the Law and Justice Party-backed candidate for president, has gone all-in on his efforts to tie himself to Trump — including flying to Washington in early May for a photo op at the White House. 'President Trump said, 'you will win,'" Nawrocki told the Polish broadcaster TV Republika. 'I read it as a kind of wish for my success in the upcoming elections, and also awareness of it, and after this whole day I can say that the American administration is aware of what is happening in Poland.' But public opinion polling shows Poles, who have long been among the U.S.' biggest fans in Europe, are souring on both the country and its current leader amid tariffs and Trump's close ties to Russia — a tricky issue in a country where many people still view Russia as a threat. Asked by a Polish public polling agency in April whether the U.S. has a positive impact on the world, just 20 percent said yes — the lowest figure since the poll was first conducted in 1987, and down from 55 percent a year ago. And 60 percent of Poles said they were 'concerned' about Trump's presidency, compared with just 15 percent who were 'hopeful.' 'Trump is the most unpopular U.S. president in Europe,' said Milan Nic, an expert on Central and Eastern Europe at the German Council on Foreign Relations. 'This means that to some supporters of Nawrocki, the photo from White House with Trump is no longer as powerful as it used to be.' Volker, the former Ukraine envoy, said right-wing parties need to walk a tightrope of embracing some of the MAGA zeal — but without linking themselves too closely to the polarizing U.S. president. 'You have to think of Trump as like fire: You can't be too close, but you can't be too far away,' said Volker. 'If you get too close to Trump you get burned, and if you're too far away you're not relevant.'
CBS News
3 days ago
- Business
- CBS News
CPAC comes to Europe as alliance between the Trump White House and the international right grows
MAGA influencers and far-right leaders gathered in Poland and Hungary this week as the Conservative Political Action Conference, known as CPAC, held two international events — a show of strength in the increasing trans-Atlantic alliance between the Trump White House and Europe's populist conservative movement. On Thursday in Budapest, Hungary's prime minister Viktor Orbán was the keynote speaker for the country's CPAC event and hailed President Trump's first 100 days following his return to the Oval Office. "The Trump tsunami swept through the entire world," Orbán said. "It gave back hope to the world. We are no longer suffocating in the woke sea." Prior to the Hungarian leader's speech, a video message from President Trump was played to those in attendance in which Mr. Trump praised the event and Orbán himself. "You know how I feel about Hungary and you know how I feel about CPAC. I respect and love them both. I also want to pay special regard to the leader of Hungary, Viktor Orbán. He's a great man and a very special person," President Trump said in the video, which was later posted to social media by CPAC founder and chairman Matt Schlapp. Orbán, who according to Human Rights Watch has used his party's supermajority in Hungarian parliament to undermine the independence of the judiciary, crack down on independent media, demonize migrants and discriminate against LGBTQ people, was among a number of notable right-wing international leaders in attendance. Those leaders at the Budapest event included the leader of Germany's far-right AFD party Alice Weidel, the leader of the Dutch far-right Party for Freedom (PVV) Geert Wilders, and former U.K. Conservative Party prime minister Liz Truss, as well as American social media influencers Ben Shapiro and Jack Posobiec. Poland's conservative presidential candidate Karol Nawrocki arrives at the Conservative Political Action Conference, CPAC, on May 27, 2025, in Rzeszow, Poland. Alex Brandon / Getty Images Notable speakers at Tuesday's events in Jasionka, Poland, included U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who gave the keynote address at the event. "I do think it's good that we are collaborating with each other," Schlapp, a former White House political director, told CBS News on Friday. "I think what we're doing is what, in the old-fashioned days, you would have called it friendship building and diplomacy, and building relationships in order to have the prosperity in our countries." Poland was playing host to CPAC for the first time earlier this week. Budapest was a venue for the event for the fourth year in row— underlining the growing relationship between MAGA Republicans and the country under Orban's ruling Fidesz Party. Many American conservatives have in recent years viewed Hungary — and Orbán — as an aspirational playbook for governance in the United States. "I think their policies on the border and on immigration have changed the whole conversation in Europe," Schlapp said. "It's certainly between Orbán and Trump, that have normalized this idea that you don't just have to take an unspecific numbers of illegal migrants because some global institution tells you that you must." A growing alliance on the right The conference is happening amidst a backdrop of tension between President Trump and America's traditional allies in Europe. While Mr. Trump recently announced that his planned 50% tariffs on European Union goods would be delayed until July, the trading block and its European allies have had an unsteady relationship with the White House since Mr. Trump's return to power in January. Members of Trump's administration have at times broken the diplomatic norm by publicly weighing in on elections and policies in U.S.-allied nations. Vice President JD Vance berated European leaders at February's Munich Security Conference and accused U.S. allies of political censorship of right-wing ideas within their own countries. The vice president cited laws in the U.K. which criminalize protests within a certain distance of abortion clinics and EU laws on online content moderations, among other examples. That trend continued at Poland's CPAC event on Tuesday, where DHS Secretary Noem called for Poles to vote for right-wing presidential candidate Karol Nawrocki in the country's upcoming runoff election against liberal opponent Rafał Trzaskowski, the current mayor of Warsaw. "I have watched over the years as socialists, and people who are just like this mayor of Warsaw, who is an absolute trainwreck of a leader, have destroyed our countries," Noem said, addressing attendees at the Jasionka event. Kirsti Noem, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security, during the CPAC Conservative Political Action Conference in Jasionka, Poland, on May 27, 2025. Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images The events this week also come just days after Samuel Samson, a senior adviser for the State Department's Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, wrote a blog post on the State Department's website which signaled a shift in the issues the U.S. is prioritizing in its traditional alliances in Europe. "The suppression of speech, facilitation of mass migration, targeting of religious expression, and undermining of electoral choice threatens the very foundation of the transatlantic partnership," the post read. The depth of the relationship between the populist right in Europe and President Trump was highlighted in the promotional description on CPAC Budapest's website. "With the triumph of Donald Trump and the rise of the European Right, the Age of the Patriots of Western Civilization has begun — CPAC Hungary 2025 will be the hub of this movement," the description of the event read. Chairman Matt Schlapp told CBS News that he believes the conference will only continue to expand globally. "We're going to go to Australia later on in the year. We're going go to Japan later on in the year, we're gonna go to Brazil later on this year. We're gonna to go Mexico. We're talking about having a CPAC in Colombia. We've had talks to have a CPAC in El Salvador. We've have talks to have CPAC in various other European countries," he said.
The Guardian
24-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘Not what we signed up for': inside Trump's ‘shocking' Kennedy Center takeover
America's biggest annual gathering of conservatives had just got under way near Washington when its organiser, Matt Schlapp, turned to Ric Grenell and quipped: 'My daughters want tickets to all the good Kennedy Center shows.' The Guardian's journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more. Grenell, a former acting director of national intelligence, was recently named by Donald Trump as interim president of the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington. He told the Conservative Political Action Conferenc last week that his vision for the centre is 'to make art great again', including 'a big, huge celebration of the birth of Christ at Christmas'. Trump's shock decision to seize control of the Kennedy Center, with a loyal apparatchik in charge, has put his anti-woke 'Maga' populism on collision course with America's progressive cultural scene like never before. Performers are cancelling shows, donors are questioning their support and audience members are threatening to boycott. It is the biggest crisis in the 54-year history of the Kennedy Center, the crown jewel of performing arts in the nation's capital. Supported by government money and private donations and attracting millions of visitors each year, the centre is a 100ft-high complex on the banks of the Potomac river featuring a concert hall, opera house and theatre, along with a lecture hall, meeting spaces and a 'Millennium Stage' that has been the site for free shows. It has long been a bipartisan enterprise, first conceived during the administration of Republican president Dwight Eisenhower, who backed a bill from the Democratic-led Congress calling for a 'national culture center'. It was later designated as a living memorial to President John F Kennedy, a Democrat, after his assassination. Construction began in 1965 and the centre formally opened in 1971 with a premiere of Leonard Bernstein's Mass. Five years later, within view of the Watergate complex, it hosted the premiere of the film All the President's Men, starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman as journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. The centre presents theatre, contemporary dance, ballet, vocal music, chamber music, hip-hop, comedy and jazz and also serves as the home to the National Symphony Orchestra and Washington National Opera. It has hosted artists ranging from the Paul Taylor Dance Company to a joint concert by Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga. Its educational initiatives reach more than 2.1 million teachers and students. Other highlights include the annual Mark Twain prize for comedy, with recipients including Lorne Michaels, Tina Fey and Bob Newhart, and the annual Kennedy Center Honors for outstanding artists, most recently Francis Ford Coppola, Bonnie Raitt and the Grateful Dead, among others. All this is now in jeopardy. Earlier this month Trump ousted chair David Rubenstein, a billionaire philanthropist, and installed himself to preside over a board that by tradition was divided between Democratic and Republican appointees but is now predominantly Republican, with recent additions including country star Lee Greenwood and the White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles. The Kennedy Center president, Deborah Rutter, brought on by Rubenstein in 2014, was fired soon after the board shakeup, along with the centre's general counsel and head of public relations. Rutter told National Public Radio (NPR): 'I'm really, really, really sad about what happens to our artists, what happens on our stages and our staff who support them. The Kennedy Center is meant to be a beacon for the arts in all of America across the country.' Trump wrote on social media that Grenell 'shares my Vision for a GOLDEN AGE of American Arts and Culture' and would be overseeing 'daily operations' to ensure 'NO MORE DRAG SHOWS, OR OTHER ANTI-AMERICAN PROPAGANDA'. But he also admitted to reporters that he has not attended performances at the centre. The cultural community was stunned by the velocity of the takeover. Amy Austin, president and chief executive of Theatre Washington, says: 'It was shocking to have that come so suddenly and so early in an administration that is making so many changes. For them to act as if there needed to be programmic changes at the Kennedy Centre when referring to one drag show and not acknowledge the work that's done there was ridiculous. 'There was no cause given for the need for change. Ever since the institution was founded it's always been a bipartisan place. The board of trustees was always a mixed group of people who, we would say in DC, come from different sides of the aisle but come together around the arts. And then it was summarily dismissed.' The radical overhaul comes as Trump and his ally Elon Musk scythe through the federal government on a mission to root out waste and inefficiency. The Kennedy Center had a budget of $268m last year, with $225m flowing from ticket sales and donations and $43m coming from taxpayers to cover building operations and maintenance. Last week Grenell raised concerns about the centre's finances in a post on X, claiming that its chief financial officer acknowledged having 'ZERO cash on hand'. A staff member at the centre, who wishes to remain anonymous, dismisses that as an 'absolute fabrication', 'complete manipulation of the data' and 'manufactured crisis'. The source says: 'The real crisis we're facing, in addition to people rescinding their membership, is that we're normally finalising our season at this time and it's been completely turned upside down. You see performers pulling out and that has real ramifications for staff and morale. We feel like we're walking on eggshells. But I want to convey the amazing leadership my colleagues are showing in an untenable situation.' The changes have sparked significant backlash. Kennedy Center consultants such as musician Ben Folds and singer Renée Fleming resigned and actor Issa Rae and author Louise Penny cancelled appearances. The Manhattan Theater Club announced that it would not bring Eureka Day, a satire about a school forced to reconsider its liberal vaccine policy, for a planned two-week run 'due to financial circumstances'. During a concert that proceeded as scheduled, singer-songwriter Victoria Clark wore a T-shirt reading 'ANTI TRUMP AF'. Stand-up comedian W Kamau Bell lambasted the president during his set and, in a dig at a pro-Trump musician, asked: 'How many times can you give Kid Rock the Mark Twain award?' The source says further big names are withdrawing. 'It's more than you've heard so far. That is the existential threat we're facing. We were just about to initiate the selection of this year's Kennedy Center honorees; all of this has been upended.' 'This coup is antithetical to the founding of the institution. The Kennedy Center is a neutral space, non-partisan by design, where everyone can see themselves on the stage. Thrusting it into a political space like this is unconscionable. This is not what we signed up for. 'This is warfare. It's an attack on freedom of expression and speech. It's repressive. It's unAmerican. The Kennedy Center is a pipeline to the broader arts ecosystem. There will be ripple effects across the whole cultural ecology if the Kennedy Center is not playing its role.' Nowhere in Washington do politics and culture meet as they do at the Kennedy Center. An 8ft-tall bronze bust of John F Kennedy sits in the grand foyer and an 81-inch bronze statue of him stands on the adjacent Reach campus. Upstairs a permanent exhibition explores the 35th president's relationship with the arts. Shops feature books by and about Kennedy and his wife Jackie along with magnets, mugs and other merchandise. Kennedy's words about the role of culture in society are inscribed in the exterior marble walls of the complex. Their highbrow references would be unthinkable for any US president today and are almost absurdly contrary to Trump's ingrained anti-intellectualism and anti-elitism. For example: 'There is a connection, hard to explain logically but easy to feel, between achievement in public life and progress in the arts. The age of Pericles was also the age of Phidias. The age of Lorenzo de Medici was also the age of Leonardo da Vinci. The age Elizabeth also the age of Shakespeare. And the New Frontier for which I campaign in public life, can also be a New Frontier for American art.' Kerry Kennedy, his niece, was at the 1971 grand opening and in 2000 saw her book Speak Truth to Power turned into a play there by the Argentine-Chilean writer Ariel Dorfman. Featuring actors such as Sigourney Weaver, Alec Baldwin, John Malkovich, Alfre Woodard and Giancarlo Esposito, the performance was attended by president Bill Clinton and human rights defenders from across the world. She recalls: 'For a lot of the people in that audience, it was an important part of the healing process. To me that one performance encapsulates why the arts are so vitally important for our country, for democracy and for the world.' But the speed and scale of Trump's actions are unlike anything the Kennedy Center has experienced in its history. Kennedy describes the firing of Rubenstein – who donated $120m to the organisation over 20 years – as 'crude and rude and ungrateful'. She is concerned about Trump reshaping the centre to reflect his own preferences and potentially eliminating content he deems objectionable. Kennedy, who is president of Robert F Kennedy Human Rights, admits: 'I do worry about it, not as an abstraction but because we've already seen it with the AP [Associated Press] being barred from White House events for refusing to go along with what the White House dictates. That's very dangerous for democracy and has grave implications for what will happen not just at the Kennedy Center but for government funding of the arts across the country.' She adds: 'It's the assault on our democracy that concerns me. I've worked for 40 years on stopping autocracies from repressing people's voices and the one consistent pattern is they go after the arts, so that's very dangerous.' Others share concerns that Trump will cause lasting damage to the Kennedy Center's reputation as a space for diverse artistic expression. It could enter a death spiral in which artists and donors are alienated, ticket sales decline, programming shifts in a more populist direction and its status as a non-partisan institution is shattered. Peter Marks, who was the Washington Post's chief theatre critic from 2002 to 2023, says: 'It's so distressing and potentially ruinous for the foreseeable future. Once an institution becomes weaponised, once an arts organisation takes such a dramatic shift away from its mission, it's very hard to get it back to what it was. People stop thinking of it as theirs and think of it as belonging to someone else. Once that happens, the alienation is disastrous.' The Trump brand could prove toxic. Marks adds: 'Which artists in this country are going to want to be aligned on a title page in a programme with Donald Trump's name at the top of it? It changes the whole question of the relationship between an artist and their audience and why they're there. 'I doubt that many producers are going to pull, for example, their theatre productions at this point – it's too financially difficult – but I wonder how many artists are going to be able to stomach lending their name to anything marketing-wise for the Kennedy Center. It remains to be seen just how deep the wound is in the short term.' Trump mostly ignored the centre during his first term, becoming the first president to routinely skip the honours ceremony. One honouree, producer Norman Lear, had threatened not to attend if Trump was there. It remains uncertain whether the president will show up this year – and whether artists will stay away as a result. Recently on social media Trump posted an AI-generated image of himself waving his arms like a conductor in a concert hall and wrote: 'Welcome to the New Kennedy Center!' What might a Trump-infused artistic programme look like? In a phone call to the Kennedy Center board obtained by CNN, he promised: 'We're going to make it hot. And we made the presidency hot, so this should be easy.' And at CPAC last week, when Grenell was asked what he thought the ideal performance at the Kennedy Center would be, he chose country singer Dolly Parton. 'I would love to see it,' he said. Indeed, his boss's cultural palate is frozen in the 20th century. Trump is known to admire singers such as Elvis Presley and films such as Citizen Kane, The Godfather, Gone with the Wind and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. His campaign rallies warm up with numbers from the Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals Cats and The Phantom of the Opera, open with Greenwood's God Bless the USA and close with the Village People's YMCA. His celebrity supporters include Mel Gibson, Dennis Quaid, Kid Rock, Sylvester Stallone and Jon Voight. Lara Trump, his daughter-in-law, is an aspiring singer seemingly immune to bad reviews. Steve Bannon, a longtime Trump adviser, mischievously proposed an opening night performance by the J6 Prison Choir, consisting of people jailed for the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol only to be later pardoned by Trump. Bannon also described the Kennedy Center 'as the high church of the secular, atheist administrative state that runs the imperial capital'. Trump's bid to control or neuter cultural institutions plays into a long history of authoritarians using the arts to push their agenda. One source in the Washington theatre industry drew comparison with Andrei Zhdanov, the Soviet politician whose doctrine sought to define permissible revolutionary art and labelled 'incorrect art' as counter-revolutionary. The source said: 'We are entering a Socialist Realist moment in American cultural policy. The purge is already happening. And there is a climate of fear at arts institutions. It's a scary time.' Marks, the theatre critic, agrees that a 'war on the arts' has been declared but adds: 'The louder the war becomes, the more vociferous the response will be and you will find a whole rising up of writers and musicians and directors and actors who are going to find other avenues of expression that will, I hope, show up this disastrous tack that the government has taken and actually compel some great art. 'That's what's going to happen because it's inevitable. Outrage feeds contemplation ultimately and we're going to all find out what that means over the next few years.'
Yahoo
20-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Conservative Bigwig Matt Schlapp Accused of Groping Another Man at a Virginia Bar
Conservative bigwig Matt Schlapp was accused of grabbing another man's genitals in a Virginia bar and restaurant, according to a Sheriff's Office report obtained by local newspaper Rappahannock News. The details of the alleged Feb. 8 incident were revealed on the first day of the Conservative Political Action Conference, an annual gathering of conservatives in Washington D.C. hosted by the American Conservative Union, which Schlapp has helmed for more than a decade. A report prepared by the Rappahannock County Sheriff's Office, obtained by the local paper and political newsletter 24sight News, indicated that a customer at The Black Twig restaurant in Sperryville had 'assaulted another customer' and was spotted leaving the scene in a silver BMW. Schlapp, 57, was reportedly identified as the subject of the complaint. He and his wife own a weekend home in neighboring Madison County. Black Twig owner Daniel Gleason called the Sheriff's Office at 11:10 p.m. on Feb. 8, according to the report, which stated that the 'subject assaulted one person grabbing their genitals.' Sheriff's deputies in the Page, Madison, and Culpeper counties were issued a 'be on the lookout' alert for Schlapp's vehicle after he left the establishment, the report said. Sheriff Connie Compton told Rappahannock News on Tuesday that the 'suspect [was] never found' and the alleged victim declined to prosecute. The Daily Beast has reached out to Schlapp, the Rappahannock County Sheriff's Office, and The Black Twig for comment. The allegations were first reported last week by independent journalist Yashar Ali, who cited six witnesses and the alleged victim. Exclusive:Seven witnesses tell me that CPAC Chairman Matt Schlapp allegedly engaged in lewd conduct and allegedly sexually assaulted a man at a bar on Saturday night near a property he owns in north-central Story: — Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) February 13, 2025 This is not the first time Schlapp has faced accusations of sexual misconduct. In 2023, the Daily Beast broke the story of then-Republican staffer Carlton Huffman, who accused Schlapp of groping his crotch during a drive back from an Atlanta bar. Schlapp's lawyer Charlie Spies denied the allegation, calling it 'false.' Huffman later sued the powerful conservative lobbyist for battery, defamation, and conspiracy in January 2023, but dropped the lawsuit after Schlapp reportedly made an offer to settle. 'This anonymous complaint demonstrates the accuser's real agenda, working in concert with [The] Daily Beast to attack and harm the Schlapp family,' Spies said in a statement at the time. In August 2023, The Washington Post reported that some CPAC board members and staffers were informed of other incidents involving Schlapp and two younger men. Though Schlapp and CPAC did not respond to The Post's requests for comment on those allegations, ACU executive committee member Matt Smith said they were 'completely fabricated.' CPAC, which dubs itself 'the most influential gathering of conservatives in the world,' will run until Feb. 22. Attendance has declined in recent years but the congregation still offers a peek into the heart of Donald Trump's MAGA movement.
