Laura Ingraham & Maria Bartiromo Set to ‘Set Fire’ to Kennedy Center: The Ultimate Right-Wing Media Power Duo!

The Fox News luminaries are part of the team tasked with MAGAfying the American public arts institution.

College campues cities like Washington, DC, and New York, and entire neighboring nations are all facing pressures to acquiesce to the Trump administration’s vision for America—and, as the unfolding scene at the Kennedy Center has made abundantly clear, arts institutions are not above the fray.

In February, Trump began an overhaul of the center, home to the acclaimed National Symphony Orchestra and Washington National Opera, making good on a grudge from 2017 wherein celebrities skipped the Kennedy Center Honors award reception at the White House, leading him to cancel the ceremony for the remainder of his term. Last month, the Trump administration fired the center’s longtime board chair, billionaire David Rubenstein, and director Deborah Rutter, with the president assuming the chair position himself. In recent weeks, multiple scheduled performers have pulled their acts or transformed them into outright protest. Issa Rae and Rhiannon Giddens canceled their appearances while comedian W. Kamau Bell showed up for his scheduled set with a vow to “turn the ‘wokey’ up to eleven!” Lin-Manuel Miranda followed suit, announcing the cancellation of a Hamilton run that was to be tied to the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

On Friday, Trump completed the latest stage in his transformation of the center, installing Fox News hosts Laura Ingraham and Maria Bartiromo as his final board appointments. As for Ingraham, she’s shown herself to have some arts interest—if we’re to take her giggling through a report on the death of musician and community activist Nipsey Hussle or stumping for Trump’s music taste as indicative of her merits. Or, the sincere lack thereof.

Thus far, the closest thing to a Kennedy Center game plan has come from Trump himself, who’s said he plans to make the center “hot,” and from Richard Grenell, its freshly minted “interim executive director” and/or “president” and/or “the ambassador,” who announced that the center has planned “a big, huge celebration of the birth of Christ at Christmas.”

But in a new interview with the New York Times, businessman and Trump’s special special envoy to Italy, Paolo Zampolli, whom Trump appointed to the center’s board during his first term, shared a more detailed list of ideas for the Kennedy Center as it enters its MAGA era.

On the hypothetical docket: everything from a Valentino fashion show (a nod to his previous work as head of a modeling agency in the ’90s—he was also the friend behind Trump’s meet-cute with Melania, whom Zampolli represented) to opening a Cipriani restaurant and a marina on the Potomac (“The Kennedy Center is very difficult to access. You put in a little marina, and on the weekend you go there—the yachts park there,” of course) to launching art into space. Like Musk doesn’t already have enough on his plate. Not to worry, though, no Michelangelos or Picassos will be sent into orbit. (Yet.) In Zampolli’s scheme, a living artist would produce three works: one for space, one for fundraising at auction, and one to “travel around.” “Imagine a miniature of the bull of Wall Street,” he said, “a tiny one, a four-inch one—on the ISS.”

MAGA has no relation to culture, if you ask Zampolli. He claims the arts and sports “should not be political.” Trump, for his part, has admitted to never having attended a show at the Kennedy Center, but nonetheless believes that his self-appointment to chairman of the board will transform the center’s performances into being “good” and “not woke.”

“The vision of some previous board members did not align with the president’s,” Zampolli told The New York Times. “He felt the people around him would go completely against his views. He had the total right to fire them.”

Zampolli has no fears of attracting artists to the center and sees the recent steps away from bipartisanship as a positive for the center’s operations, affording the center “unlimited potential.”

“This will cut the bureaucracy. There are people who are very close to the president on the board right now. They will be able to escalate issues directly to him.”

Jury’s still out on whether having Trump’s ear always leads to the greatest payoff.