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Jim Acosta peeved over Kennedy Center workaround restoring Trump name; wants board, work crew jailed

August 15, 2026 | | Print Article

Jim Acosta is big-time mad about the Kennedy Center board’s vote to put President Donald J. Trump’s name back on the building.

In the Thursday vote, which was an innovative workaround of an Obama-appointed judge’s banning of the president’s name from the front of the Washington, D.C. performing arts center, the board approved new verbiage stating: “Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump” below the venue’s name.

The former CNN host was ridiculed in June when he likened the taking of Trump’s name off of the building’s facade to the fall of the Berlin Wall, a ridiculously overblown comparison that suggests he was always an activist and not a real journalist.

Acosta reacted to the board’s vote – which also names an outside area after the president – which he decried as “insanity” in an X post sharing The New York Times report on the board’s thumbing of its nose at U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper, who blocked the changing of the name to the “Trump-Kennedy Center” in May.

He also threw another of his silly snits during his “The Jim Acosta Show” podcast, calling for the board and crew to be tossed into jail.

“If they start chiseling Donald Trump’s name into the side of that building, or doing something to change the signage of that building in violation of a judge’s order, somebody needs to go to jail,” Acosta fumed.

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“Somebody on that Kennedy Center board, the construction crews who are out there, they should know that you are not to take a chisel to the Kennedy Center and put that crazy lunatic’s name on the side of that building,” he declared.

“The people who are on the Kennedy Center board, they need to be told in no uncertain terms that they are putting themselves in legal jeopardy by pulling this sh*t with the American people, and pulling this sh*t with the people of Washington, D.C.,” the former CNN pest added.

Despite the Obama judge’s order, the board went ahead with the vote to honor Trump, who has made it a personal mission to renovate the beloved venue which he previously lambasted as being “rusted, rotted, and rat and bug infested,” also voting to proceed with shutting the Kennedy Center down for two years to undertake the needed overhaul.

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“The Kennedy Center is broken, unsafe, and $busted, and has been for many years! Judge Cooper also stated that the highly prestigious Board of the Center was not authorized to add on the name ‘TRUMP’ despite the fact that hundreds of millions of dollars of my time and money will be necessary for its successful reincarnation. So now, the Kennedy Center will collapse, both structurally and financially,” Trump said in a May 30 post to Truth Social reacting to the Obama judge’s ruling.

“The Kennedy Center Board of Trustees has reaffirmed its unwavering commitment to the responsible stewardship of America’s Cultural Center. With the confidence of the Board and Chairman President Trump’s unprecedented support, this historic revitalization project can commence, ensuring the Kennedy Center emerges from this next chapter as a stronger, more resilient home for the arts — one that will serve audiences and artists for generations to come,” a Kennedy Center spokesperson told Fox News Digital after the vote.

Chris Donaldson
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