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Beatty reveals heated discussion with Trump over Kennedy Center Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio), an ex-officio Kennedy Center board member, said Tuesday she got into a heated discussion with President Trump over the center. In an interview with NewsNation’s Joe Khalil, Beatty said that due to her opposition to closing the Kennedy Center during a board meeting, the president “found it necessary to go into what he does — name calling.” “He has a limited vocabulary, so, you know, he knows words like dumb, you know, and things like that. I was surprised that the board people let it go on. So, we had some exchange of words,” she added. When Khalil pressed Beatty on her response to the president, the Ohio congresswoman said that Trump, the chair of the board, “said he thought I was incompetent, and I said, ‘I know you’re incompetent.’” The Kennedy Center board voted Tuesday to immediately close the institution’s main building for renovations, a source familiar with the situation told The Hill. The board has asserted that only the president can raise enough money to save the Kennedy Center. A federal judge on Tuesday blocked an effort by the Kennedy Center to inscribe Trump’s name on the building, as well as rename the campus after the president. Beatty is leading a lawsuit against the renaming effort. U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper ruled that the Kennedy Center board, handpicked by the president, could not go ahead with plans without approval from Congress and found that a vote on the renaming last month probably violated his prior injunction. When reached for comment by NewsNation, White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said that “for decades, Democrats let the Kennedy Center rot as water damage spread, infrastructure crumbled, and a national treasure fell apart under their watch. “President Trump stepped up to save it, and Trump-deranged Dumocrats like Joyce Beatty oppose anything that celebrates the greatness of our country because they put America Last.” Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
document fetched 2026-09-16 02:56 · canonical https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/6091934-beatty-trump-kennedy-center-clash