Josef Palermo was the first person in charge of visual arts at the Kennedy Center. Soon after he started his job, he spent 10 months watching Donald Trump’s team take over, break down, and steal from one of America’s most famous cultural places. When they fired him and asked him to stay quiet in exchange for some money, he refused to shut up.
Now he’s speaking out.
And what he witnessed is even worse than what people might have thought.
Trump picked someone named Richard to lead the arts organization.
Richard was a former ambassador who didn’t have any experience with the arts. He reportedly wanted to be Secretary of State instead. Palermo says that Grenell treated the Kennedy Center presidency as a consolation prize and ran the institution like his own special area and also used it for Trump’s fundraising efforts.
Tickets for a performance of Les Misérables cost $2 million, and included a private reception for the president.
One of Palermo’s colleagues, someone who had worked in Republican campaigns, said, “We are bringing political management techniques into a nonpolitical organization.”
According to Palermo, corruption was everywhere.
The famous Circles Lounge was renamed the SyberJet Lounge — after a company whose CEO had been convicted of scamming investors and received a Trump pardon.
The African Room, which had priceless artifacts representing African culture, was renamed “A Tribute to America’s Intelligence Community” and given to a donor who the Wall Street Journal said had lied about being in the CIA.
Handmade African textiles, a wooden sculpture donated by Ghana to mourn President Kennedy’s assassination, and doors carved from 700-year-old wood depicting Yoruba village scenes were taken down. Palermo was never told where they went.
At an anniversary event in the Israeli Lounge — a gathering to honor victims of a violent attack — Grenell used the moment to ask Jewish attendees for donations, warning that the room would be given away to a new sponsor if they didn’t pay.
“It would be a shame if we lost this room,” he said. Palermo was very upset.
One of Grenell’s assistants messaged Palermo asking if the Center could “do something” with an artist whose work Grenell personally owned — a move that would raise the artwork’s value and directly benefit Grenell.
Palermo ignored the request.
Meanwhile, Grenell made a rule that everyone had to come into the office except himself.
While staff members’ meeting requests went unanswered, Grenell was posting Instagram photos from a yacht off the coast of Croatia. The Kennedy Center now denies this happened, despite the existence of the Instagram posts.
Then came the order that made Palermo stop in his tracks.
Grenell told him to “get rid of everything” in the permanent collection — including the eight-foot, 3,000-pound brass bust of President Kennedy that has stood in the Grand Foyer since the center opened. If donors wouldn’t pay to remove the items, Grenell said, they could be auctioned off or given away. When Palermo told another senior leader about this, the man’s eyes widened. He told Palermo to do nothing and said his office would handle it.
The roof was leaking.
The willow trees outside were rotting. The fundraising team couldn’t even pay their postage bills. But the most important renovation? Adding gold gilding to the chandelier in the presidential box at the Opera House.
Grenell’s big plan for the Kennedy Center’s 250th birthday celebration?
A talent show like America’s Got Talent. We’re not joking.
Palermo refused to keep quiet.
He is now helping Senator Sheldon Whitehouse’s investigation and has been in contact with Representative Joyce Beatty’s legal team, which is suing to stop the renaming of the center.
“There must be a firewall in place by Congress to stop this kind of hostile political takeover of the Kennedy Center from happening again,” he wrote.
The Kennedy Center was built as a living memorial to President John F. Kennedy — a gift to the American people and a symbol of this nation’s commitment to art, culture, and the best of what humanity can create.
Trump renamed it after himself, tried to sell its lounges to Kazakhstan, ordered the disposal of its permanent collection, and ran it into the ground in less than a year.
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Everyone who benefited from the dismantling of the Kennedy Center will be charged with theft, fined, and imprisoned! Every artifact had better be returned before We The People have to be repack down to retrieve Our property! This is an illegal regime that has hijacked Our Oval Office therefore everything they have done, are doing, or will do is illegal!