RFK Jr.’s sister knocks Trump on Kennedy Center shutdown

Kerry Kennedy, the sister of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., blamed President Trump for the Kennedy Center’s board voting to close the performing arts venue, calling the decision a “tragedy”

“The American people love the Kennedy Center,” she told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Tuesday. “They love the arts. They understand what’s going on, they see the corruption of this.”

The Trump-aligned board voted to close the center for renovations, with officials claiming it faces “fiscal collapse.” The trustees also cited a recent water leak that caused damage to the grand foyer ceiling as proof the building is “unsafe for continued occupancy.”

But Kerry Kennedy, the daughter of former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, said the center is not facing a “financial issue.”

“President Trump has said they have $250 million, ready to hand over tomorrow,” she continued, referring to the building’s congressionally appropriated funding.

“He’s just withholding it because he wants his name on the building,” Kerry Kennedy added. “So, this is like so many other things that Trump has touched. It’s a bankruptcy because he adds his name to it.”

Minutes before the Kennedy Center board’s vote to close the facility, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper again blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to add the president’s name to the building’s exterior.

After Cooper’s ruling, Trump warned the center will not be renovated if judges continue to shut down the name change.

Kerry Kennedy was not the only family member to knock the president over the closure.

Her cousin, Maria Shriver, said the fact that “a sitting president would not let any renovations to a public building go on unless he gets to first put his name in the said building” was a “sad state of affairs.”

Shriver’s mother, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, was the sister of former President Kennedy and the late attorney general.

“Actually, how small minded, how narcissistic,” Shriver wrote Tuesday on social platform X. “Actually great men, devoted to public service and the public good do not act like this.”