At first glance, President Donald Trump’s fixation on the Kennedy Center is puzzling.

The institution embodies nearly everything he disdains. Its patrons are largely residents of Washington, D.C., which backed Kamala Harris by 90% in the 2024 election. Its programs cater to elite cultural tastes rather than Andrew Lloyd Webber and UFC fights. And its understated modernist architecture is the opposite of the gilded excess that defines his brand.

But his obsession does not appear to be about the symphonies, the concerts or even the building — from which he finally, begrudgingly, removed his name over the weekend. I’d bet it’s about the name that remains on the building: John F. Kennedy.

Kennedy was likely the first president he followed with any real attention.

Trump was 14 when JFK took office and 17 when he was assassinated — meaning Kennedy was likely the first president he followed with any real attention. He possessed all the things Trump has long valued: fame, glamour, wealth and media attention. The Kennedy name is the kind of brand that Trump seems to hope his last name will become.

For a man with a cursory knowledge of his predecessors — such as his surprise that Lincoln was a Republican — Trump comes back to JFK surprisingly often. And like Nixon talking to the portrait of JFK in the Oliver Stone biopic, he’s clearly conflicted. As president, he’s released the records of the Kennedy assassination, appointed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to his Cabinet and compared his wife to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. (“We have our own Jackie O,” he said in 2019. “It’s called Melania, Melania T.”) But he’s also covered Jackie Kennedy’s Rose Garden with pavers, fired staffers of JFK’s presidential library and feuded with members of the Kennedy family.

Seen in this light, Trump’s attempt to change the performing arts center’s name to “The Donald J. Trump and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts” makes more sense, as does his attempt to shutter it for renovations. And the Trump-allied board’s decision Sunday to create a new endowment at the Kennedy Center in his name sounds like an attempt to placate the president after a court ordered his name be removed.

If so, it didn’t work. Trump posted on social media that he was washing his hands of the building and its future.

“Unless I am free to do what I do better than anyone else, bring this Institution back, physically, financially, and artistically, I have no interest in continuing what could only be a hopeless journey into ‘NEVER NEVER LAND,’” he wrote.

If Trump cared about the Kennedy Center itself, having his name taken off the exterior shouldn’t have changed his mind about its future. But if his only goal was to get a little of that Kennedy magic to rub off on him, then it makes sense that he’s no longer interested.

The irony of all this is that JFK’s record is — boomers reading this, avert your eyes — massively overrated. He was too cautious on civil rights, too eager on Vietnam and too wishy-washy on the Bay of Pigs. Most of his legislative goals were achieved under Lyndon Johnson, a crass, foul-mouthed politician who wanted to be at the center of every room, demanded personal loyalty and loved to intimidate senators — in other words, the politician that Trump should have emulated.

LBJ didn’t get to have Marilyn Monroe breathily sing “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” at Madison Square Garden, as JFK did when he turned 45. But neither did Trump, for that matter. Instead, for the week of his 80th birthday, he had a crowd boo him at Madison Square Garden and his name literally stripped from Kennedy’s on an iconic building. The closest thing to Monroe that he got was a generic compliment from a bizarrely dressed UFC fight girl. If history repeats itself, first as tragedy and then as farce, Sunday was less Kennedy’s mythic Camelot and more Monty Python’s “Spamalot.”

The American public has gotten a close look at Trump over the past 10 years. And to borrow a quote, they have told him, “you’re no Jack Kennedy.”

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President Donald Trump sometimes seems to fancy himself a king, so it’s not surprising that he treats his Cabinet like a royal court. In his second term, the president has filled his top posts with courtiers who compete to offer the most extravagant praise in marathon Cabinet meetings.

And that’s how we should look at acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s work for the past two months. Blanche has served in a temporary capacity while Trump decided whether to nominate him permanently. It was a seemingly endless job interview — one he could fail only by disappointing the man conducting it. Last week, he finally passed the test when Trump announced that he would nominate him for the post, subject to Senate confirmation.

But his conduct during that audition should be disqualifying.

Since becoming acting attorney general in April, the president’s former personal lawyer has often seemed more like his current personal lawyer. Blanche has argued that the president has the “right” and “duty” to direct Justice Department investigations, advanced investigations involving Trump’s political adversaries, refused to recuse himself from matters presenting potential conflicts of interest, and unsuccessfully sought to create a nearly $1.8 billion fund that critics warned could reward Trump allies, including Jan. 6 defendants.

We’ve all been in job interviews, so it’s not hard to see what was going on here. When the interviewer asks whether you’re willing to work nights and weekends, you say yes. By naming Blanche acting attorney general, Trump put him in a position where he could either do the president’s bidding or risk losing the job he wanted.

That dynamic would be troubling in any Cabinet department. But it is especially dangerous at the Department of Justice, which possesses the power to investigate virtually any American. As Attorney General Robert Jackson observed in a famous 1940 speech, a federal prosecutor “has more control over life, liberty, and reputation than any other person in America.”

The greatest danger, Jackson warned, comes when “the prosecutor picks some person whom he dislikes or desires to embarrass, or selects some group of unpopular persons and then looks for an offense.” The reverse danger is just as real: A prosecutor can decline to pursue an ally despite compelling evidence.

For that reason, Americans have long expected the Justice Department to maintain a degree of independence from the White House. It was considered scandalous when former President Bill Clinton merely chatted with Attorney General Loretta Lynch on an airport tarmac while her department was investigating Hillary Clinton in 2016.

In the past, a Senate-confirmed attorney general could resist improper pressure from a president. That is what happened during Watergate, when President Richard Nixon ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire the special prosecutor investigating him. Richardson and his deputy refused and resigned. Nixon ultimately got his way, but only at enormous political cost.

An acting attorney general is in a much worse position. If displeased, Trump didn’t need to fire Blanche. He simply could have declined to nominate him. No scandal. No Saturday Night Massacre. No political cost. Some supporters might even have praised him for changing course.

Trump relied heavily on acting officials during his first term, naming everyone from the attorney general to the defense secretary to the White House chief of staff in an acting capacity. He liked the arrangement because it gave him, in his own words, “more flexibility.”

Since returning to the White House, he has used the tactic far less frequently, in part because a Republican-controlled Senate confirmed virtually all of his Cabinet nominees. The major exception was Matt Gaetz, the scandal-plagued Florida congressman whose nomination collapsed before a vote.

The job he was nominated for? Attorney general.

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