Just As We Thought - Kennedy Center Reception Canceled

In a post yesterday, I noted that several people were refusing to attend a White House reception for a Kennedy Center event to award people in the arts and humanities and wondered if Trump would just cancel it. Pretty much.

Past presidents and first ladies have hosted a reception for honorees at the White House before the gala at the nearby Kennedy Center and sat with them at the televised event.

[...]

Saturday,  [...]  it emerged that [Trump] and his wife are to skip a prestigious arts awards ceremony and White House reception with the fallout from the president’s comments on Charlottesville showing no sign of abating.

  Guardian

Spoiled brat.

“To allow the honorees to celebrate without any political distraction” is the official reason for this shunning.  But you know that's not why. Three reasons: 1) Some of the honorees dared to publicly turn their backs on him by refusing to attend the White House receptio;. 2) He doesn't like it when someone else is being honored; and 3) He's wanting to defund arts and humanities anyway.

Also...

The entire membership of the president’s Commission on the Arts and Humanities, appointed by Barack Obama, resigned on Friday.

  Denver Post

The committee itself was established during Reagan's first term in office.

They wrote a tough ass letter.

“Reproach and censure in the strongest possible terms are necessary following your support of the hate groups and terrorists who killed and injured fellow Americans in Charlottesville,” the commissioners wrote in a letter sent to the White House on Friday morning. “The false equivalencies you push cannot stand. The Administration’s refusal to quickly and unequivocally condemn the cancer of hatred only further emboldens those who wish America ill. We cannot sit idly by, the way that your West Wing advisors have, without speaking out against your words and actions.”

[...]

“You have attacked both [the Arts and the Humanities]. You released a budget which eliminates arts and culture agencies. You have threatened nuclear war while gutting diplomacy funding. The Administration pulled out of the Paris agreement, filed an amicus brief undermining the Civil Rights Act, and attacked our brave trans service members. You have subverted equal protections, and are committed to banning Muslims and refugee women & children from our great country. This does not unify the nation we all love. We know the importance of open and free dialogue through our work in the cultural diplomacy realm, most recently with the first-ever US Government arts and culture delegation to Cuba, a country without the same First Amendment protections we enjoy here. Your words and actions push us all further away from the freedoms we are guaranteed.”

Inoring your hateful rhetoric would have made us complicit in your words and actions. We took a patriotic oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

[...]

Your values are not American values.

  SCRIBD

Ouch. I think that's pretty clear. But wait...

We must be better than this. We are better than this. If this is not clear to you, then we call on you to resign your office, too.

Very clear.

One little detail:

In a statement late Friday, the White House claimed that Trump had decided earlier this month to disband the committee by not renewing its charter when it expires at the end of the year.

The committee “has done good work but simply is not a responsible way to spend American tax dollars,” the White House said.

  Denver Post

Uh-huh. Sure.  Timing, assholes. Timing.