President Trump's favorite musical is the famous “Les Miserables,” but few fans have stormed the barricades to enter the Kennedy Center this season.
The Washington Post reports that sales for the current season of music, dance and theater at the Washington, D.C. cultural institution have declined dramatically since the president's inauguration and his subsequent assumption of leadership of the Kennedy Center.
The Post cites data showing that the Kennedy Center sold only 57% of its tickets from September to mid-October, many of which are believed to have been compensated gifts. That contrasts with a 93% ticket sales rate during the same period last year.
Venues surveyed include the Opera, Concert Hall, and Eisenhower Theater, featuring performances by the National Symphony Orchestra, touring Broadway musicals, and dance groups. Of the 143,000 possible seats for the current season, 53,000 have not yet been sold. When fans bought tickets, they spent less than half as much money from September to the first half of October 2025 compared to the same period last year, the lowest total since 2018, apart from the height of the 2020 pandemic.
After Trump's election, he appointed Republican diplomat and former State Department spokesman Richard Grenell to lead the Kennedy Center, whose board elected Trump as its chairman. The new leadership fired several long-time employees, and leaders and prominent board members like Ben Folds left the organization.
“I couldn't be a pawn in that,” Folds told The Times. “Was I supposed to call my friends like Sara Bareilles and say, 'Hey, do you want to come play here?'”
Artists performing at the Kennedy Center have noticed a change in audiences. Yasmin Williams, a singer-songwriter who performed in September after a contentious email exchange with Grennell, said that “during my show at the Kennedy Center on Thursday night, a group of Tr*mp fans booed me when I mentioned Ric Grenell and seemed to be there to intimidate me,” yet “playing that Malcolm in the audience…that’s why you do what I do.” (Kennedy Center spokesperson Roma Daravi told the Post, “This is an absolutely ridiculous claim.”)
Grennell, for his part, said on In August, Trump announced his nominees for the Kennedy Center honors, including actor and filmmaker Sylvester Stallone, glam rockers KISS, singer Gloria Gaynor, country music star George Strait and English actor and comedian Michael Crawford.
