By STEVEN SLOAN, Related Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — The president of the Kennedy Heart on Friday fiercely criticized a musician’s sudden resolution to cancel a Christmas Eve efficiency on the venue after the White Home introduced that President Donald Trump’s title can be added to the ability.
“Your decision to withdraw at the last moment — explicitly in response to the Center’s recent renaming, which honors President Trump’s extraordinary efforts to save this national treasure — is classic intolerance and very costly to a non-profit Arts institution,” the venue’s president, Richard Grenell, wrote in a letter to musician Chuck Redd that was shared with The Related Press.
Within the letter, Grenell stated he would search $1 million in damages “for this political stunt.”
Redd didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
“When I saw the name change on the Kennedy Center website and then hours later on the building, I chose to cancel our concert,” Redd stated.
President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, and Congress handed a legislation the next yr naming the middle as a residing memorial to him.
In keeping with the White Home, Trump’s handpicked board authorized the renaming, which students have stated violates the legislation. Kennedy niece Kerry Kennedy has vowed to take away Trump’s title from the constructing as soon as he leaves workplace, and former Home historian Ray Smock is amongst those that say any adjustments must be authorized by Congress.
The legislation explicitly prohibits the board of trustees from making the middle right into a memorial to anybody else, and from placing one other individual’s title on the constructing’s exterior.
Related Press author Hillel Italie in New York contributed to this report.
