Staff Reports
Kari Lake didn’t mince words on the red carpet when she told Breitbart that President Trump is “depoliticizing” the Kennedy Center so Americans can enjoy the arts without being lectured by a woke agenda. Her blunt assessment captures what millions of everyday citizens have felt for years: they want entertainment, not cultural sermons. This isn’t theater chatter — it’s a political and cultural reckoning that the left tried to ignore until donors and audiences started voting with their feet.
What Lake described is no accident; it follows a deliberate, unprecedented intervention by the president into an institution that had drifted into ideological activism. Trump has taken the chairmanship of the Kennedy Center board, personally announced this year’s honorees, and even hosted medal presentations and the gala events — moves that signal the end of cultural institutions operating as sanctuaries for partisan propaganda. Conservatives who warned that the arts were being used as a political classroom are finally seeing leadership that restores balance and common-sense stewardship.
The results are immediate and undeniable: fundraising for this year’s Honors surged to a record haul, with the Kennedy Center reporting roughly $23 million raised — a dramatic increase that shows Americans are responding when institutions stop alienating half the country. That kind of money doesn’t come from political cronies alone; it comes from citizens who want to bring their families to performances that celebrate excellence instead of ideology. If conservatives are accused of wanting to “politicize” the arts, the real question is why the left thinks it’s fine to exclude the rest of America in the name of virtue signaling.
Naturally, the cultural establishment and the legacy press have screamed that this is a hostile takeover rather than a rescue mission, trotting out stories about staff departures and management shakeups as proof of chaos. The truth is simpler: an institution that was mismanaged and turned into a platform for woke activism needed a course correction, and that produces resistance from those who benefitted from the old regime. Americans who value the arts and their kids’ ability to sit shoulder to shoulder with neighbors they disagree with should be wary of media outrage that defends censorship-by-critique.
Kari Lake herself has been on the front lines of the fight to restore sanity to public institutions, serving in a leadership role at the U.S. Agency for Global Media and pushing back against bureaucratic inertia and ideological capture. Critics will point to legal disputes over titles and authority because that’s what they do when conservative appointees dismantle comfortable fiefdoms. But hardworking patriots know the difference between lawful reform and the cozy, partisan management that hollowed out the Kennedy Center; Lake’s outspokenness is a reminder that reformers won’t be silenced by establishment handwringing.
This is bigger than one gala or one boardroom fight — it’s a turning point in how America treats its culture. If conservatives seize this moment to insist that the arts celebrate talent, tradition, and truth rather than preach politics from the stage, we will have reclaimed public space for ordinary Americans. Don’t let the angry pundits and talking heads fool you: restoring the Kennedy Center to a place where families feel welcome is patriotism in action, and it’s exactly the sort of bold leadership this country needs.
