Jimmy Kimmel spotted a moment in Washington from President Donald Trump’s birthday weekend that definitely wasn’t part of the White House celebration.
“It wasn’t all cake and blowing out cankles for Trump this weekend,” Kimmel said. “Ten minutes down the block, the words ‘Donald J. Trump’ were officially removed from the Kennedy Center.” Kimmel’s audience cheered the news that a court ordered Trump to remove his name from the performing arts center. He said the president didn’t want the visual of his name being plucked off the building, so they put up a giant tarp to block the view. “This is the same tarp they put down when he eats,” Kimmel cracked.
Trump seized control over the venue and had his name added last year, but the move caused artists to cancel their performances at the venue in protest. Ticket sales also plunged. But one event proved pretty popular: the removal of the president’s name from the building.
“About 150 people showed up to watch them take his name off, which is the biggest crowd to attend an event at the Kennedy Center since he renamed the place,” Kimmel said. The center has also removed all of the Trump Kennedy Center merch it had been selling. “Means there’s some impoverished village somewhere in the world, they’re about to get a ton of ‘Spurs NBA champions’ and ‘Trump Kennedy Center’ merchandise,” Kimmel said.
And he couldn’t resist getting in one last dig with a reference to a place where the president’s name remains prominent. “Don’t worry, you can still find his name thousands and thousands of times in the Trump-Epstein Files,” he said, referring to the files related to late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who was once a close Trump friend. See more in Kimmel’s Monday night monologue.
