Ben Folds Responds to Performers Leaving Kennedy Center

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1:13Ben Meiselas:Now about a dozen performers have looked at Donald Trump and his phony board at the Kennedy Center, which he vandalized and calls the Trump Kennedy Center unlawfully. And these performers are saying, we quit. We are not going to be performing for this regime. Also, attendance is down so much. It's like no one's even showing up to this place, this propaganda vandalized center by this Trump regime. So here's the latest right here. The Washington National Opera decided on Friday to move out of its longtime home at the Kennedy Center. And they've been at the Kennedy Center since the 1970s. And they're saying goodbye there.

2:01Ben Meiselas:Now we have a list of at least 10 additional acts that have canceled at the Kennedy Center. Hamilton, of course, the Broadway musical Chuck Redd, the leader of the Kennedy Center's annual Jazz Jams Christmas. The Cookers, the jazz supergroup, canceled a pair of shows. Stephen Schwartz, the Wicked Composer, withdrew as host of the Washington National Opera Gala, set for May 16th. You have Issa Rae, the Insecure star, canceled a sold-out March 16th, 2025 stop. Bella Fleck canceled a trio of concerts with the National Sympathy Aukesha scheduled for February 2025. Rhiannon Giddens, the Grammy-winning musician, canceled the May 11th 2025 concert at the Kennedy Center.

2:47Ben Meiselas:Low Cut Connie, the Philadelphia Rockers, called off a February 2025 performance. Peter Wolff, Christy Lee, Doug Barone, Balloon, Amanda Room, and others. And then, of course, Earlier in the year, you had Ben Folds immediately stepping down in February as an artistic advisor there at the Kennedy Center, Shonda Rhimes, Renee Fleming and others. And you remember, you may remember, we interviewed Ben Folds back in February when he resigned right away. As soon as the Trump regime said that they were changing that board and they were going to be intervening with their propaganda, he was like, I am gone.

3:26Ben Meiselas:He resigned from the National Symphony Orchestra as Trump seized the center. His statement was, given the developments at the Kennedy Center effective today, I'm resigning as the advisor to the National Symphony Orchestra. Not for me, he said. And again, you may remember that interview that I did with him, which has since gone mega viral, over two and a half million views. Here's what some D.C. residents are saying about the vandalizing of the Trump, Trump calling it the Trump Kennedy Center and vandalizing it by plastering his name on it. Here, play this clip. Feeling like democracy died today.

4:05Ben Meiselas:This is history happening today. And we should all be shocked, shocked that a felon, a convicted felon and a thug and And by all means, a grifter has just stuck his name on top of a national monument. This is a desecration. Here's what Jim Acosta had to say when he was there that day. Let's play it. Well, here we are at the scene of yet another crime committed by Donald Trump. He has vandalized the Kennedy Center by putting his name on it. And he just needs to understand that, first of all, he can't do this single handedly. Only Congress can authorize a change of name to the Kennedy Center. But yet he doesn't care about the law.

4:53Ben Meiselas:He doesn't care what is appropriate. He's gone and vandalized the Kennedy Center, which is, we should note, the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts. It was named after President Kennedy after he was assassinated. Donald Trump should show some respect for that. But of course, he doesn't do that. And, you know, this is what needs to be said. We, the American people, are not going to call the Kennedy Center the Trump Kennedy Center, just like we're not going to call the Department of Defense the Department of War or the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of America. We, the sane, rational American people, are not going to go along with that.

5:31Ben Meiselas:So Trump can act like a child. He can be a vandal, put his name up on all of these buildings. but it's not going to change what the rest of us do in response to what has been a childish and lawless administration. Now I want to bring in Ben Folds, American singer, songwriter, and composer. Ben Folds, great to have you back on the Midas Touch Network. And we interviewed you when you resigned as artistic advisor to the National Symphony Orchestra back in February. A lot has happened since our last interview. Talk to us about what you're seeing right now with Trump vandalizing. How do you contextualize all this?

6:08Well, it's really sad. The Kennedy Center had so many great missions, and it is a memorial as well. It's as close to sacred stuff as you can get for our federal government. But, you know, aside from that, it really is playing out roughly the way that that it felt it would for me a year ago. And I'm not saying that I understood how events would unfold exactly. But it was clearly the first step of it was it was an authoritarian move. It was an authoritarian first first step. And like, obviously, they weren't going to start by trying to steamroller late night comedians. They thought they would run over us first.

6:55And And that's much easier because it's close to home and they know how to do it. But now the things that are happening are no surprise because it wasn't just him. I think people misunderstand. It's not just him going in and wanting to book bands or something. It's commandeering the governments, the arts. And then from there, that's expression. That's freedom of expression. And from there, you move on to the networks and to Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel and 60 Minutes and you just keep steamrolling. So I was sick on my stomach when I quit because, one, I knew they were going to run in the ground.

7:36No one that they were appointing had any experience in arts administration, but that was never the point. The point was to take that, run over it and move on. So it's rotting over, you know, next to the Potomac in the moment. And it's like it's just sad, you know.

7:52Ben Meiselas:One of the things that we talked about back in February was how the Kennedy Center was actually a place where people who fled repressive regimes, whose artistic endeavors and pursuits were harmed and squashed by authoritarians, could play the National Symphony Orchestra. You talked about the history of some of these composers here who played at the Kennedy Center as a celebration of freedom that they found in the United States. And so you, as a student of history, saw the moment that Donald Trump was doing what he did with that board. You said, this is just authoritarian 101. Talk to us about that unique history of the.

8:35Yeah. Well, the Kennedy Center, well, the National Symphony Orchestra, who, of course, was an orchestra before the Kennedy Center was there. They're a separate entity. They're just trapped in the building right now. But the National Symphony Orchestra, one of the first directors of the orchestra was Rostropovich. His name is so long that everyone just calls him Slava. And he was Shostakovich, famous Dmitry Shostakovich, famous composer. He was basically his right-hand man, an incredible cellist and a great conductor. And he fled the Soviet Union. And he found himself the director of the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center.

9:21And, you know, like his homie Shostakovich, Shostakovich was constantly in danger of being arrested, his friends being arrested, tortured, killed because he was trying to make artistic stands. So what you know when you see a place being taken over like that, you can think about what Slava would have thought coming from the USSR and being able to express himself, being able to play his friend's music, Shostakovich there, without being threatened because the government had no say, politics, government, dictator has no say over the arts. You leave that alone. That's for the people. When they want to take that over, that's just propaganda.

10:11And so that is what made me sick to begin with. And nothing that's unfolding now seems surprising. Putting Trump's name on the place, it is. It's like, yeah, it's like he's, you know, spray painted his name on the side of it. but it's, it's still the center. It was, it's just being held hostage at the moment. And I'm kind of, in some ways, I think it's like, it reminds me of the picture, the photograph of, or the footage of Hitler in front of the Eiffel tower. Like, look, look what I've got. You know, that's what it seems like when he put his name on.

10:48Ben Meiselas:What does it tell you though, when you see the resignations and the other individuals quitting, you know, and everybody has their own time for it. You know, I don't fault someone who waited a little bit later or whatever. I mean, you know, you took the stand when you did because you saw what was happening and you studied history that way. But what do you make of what's happening, especially when it's like the Washington National Opera that's been there, you know, for basically 50 years? And then what do you say to other individuals there who are performing, but they're uncomfortable and they're afraid Are we going to get sued by Rick Grinnell?

11:30Ben Meiselas:And he's like, how do you navigate this? First, what does it say to you about the resignations? How do you think people navigate it? Well, it's tricky because it's really different for everybody. I mean, for instance, my friends in the National Symphony Orchestra, some of them have varying views about how they should be handling this, but nobody's happy or inspired by it. They're really worried about their jobs, and they're in a different position than me. I was in a position to draw attention to this, and I knew that as a curator that there's no way that I could curate fairly and safely. I can't bring an artisan who might have different views than Rick Grinnell or Trump.

12:12I can't bring those people in. Look, they had Yasmin Williams booed that they paid to do it. Um, so yeah, um, I think that everyone has to find their own space there. I personally wouldn't, wouldn't touch the place while it's, while it's nuclear right now, because I don't think that you're really, I don't, I wouldn't feel safe playing there. I wouldn't think that I was in good hands. I wouldn't think people are going to show up even if I'm just going to be a total capitalist about it. It's like, yeah, let the market speak. How's the Kennedy center doing? oops don't play there that venue that venue can't draw a crowd so they don't know what they're doing there so um i don't see any reason to be there now you know like an organization like the the uh the opera um they have a board they have a whole kinds of contracts with them we'll see what happens but the individuals that work for them are just people trying to make a living in the arts and they just got to show up at work and and it's it's really really unfortunate it's really sad it Makes me sad for all of them.

13:22Ben Meiselas:You know, as a student of history, you foreseeing, I mean, look, when Trump won and started these pronouncements, it seemed it was going in a direction. But, you know, recognizing what it meant when he had his eye on the Kennedy Center, you know, you were able to say, There's something specific about this view of dominating cultural zeitgeist that authoritarians in the past have seized on. And he has that, you know, demented, malignant, narcissistic grasp. But like now where we're at, you know, we're a year into this thing. You know, there have been big no kings protests that the institutions have bent and many have broken.

14:10Ben Meiselas:There's resiliency in the people. So how do you see where we are kind of right now, January, mid to beginning of January, 2026? And what do you want to see? Well, I think, you know, artists, it's the same as I felt a year ago. I think that the responsibility and the right of artists is to express honestly. And it's a little bit sometimes like reportage. You know, it's a little bit like journalism. and I think that that is what artists need to do right now while we still can't. Obviously, you don't have to do it at the Kennedy Center. It was an amazing place with an amazing mission and all kinds of access to facilities, and it was beautiful.

15:02By the way, it used to make some money, and now it's not run well. But the artist right now, we should all be expressing ourselves with no. There was a time, I think, and I came up in this era of the 90s, this sort of shut up and sing era where you're worried you're going to alienate your artist. I think right now is the time to absolutely stand up and express yourself. If that's political, do it. If it's social, do it. If it's what you love for lunch, hey, that's fine, too. But be honest in your reporting because you may not have that luxury if we keep going like we're going. Better to do it now.

15:47Better to show up at the protest now than have to show up in the protest in a year and worried about getting, you know, jailed and killed. It's now is the time to, and the artist's job has always been to be a little ahead of the curve where things are going. the artist can explain that in terms that no one else is allowed to. It doesn't have to make sense. It has to feel right, and that's what moves people. And the reason the arts are important, and all these people said they weren't important, that we're on the right side of the government. So the arts don't matter. We don't need to fund it. Boy, they sure thought it was important when it came to the Kennedy Center.

16:26They took that over in like one month. So the arts are important and the artist is really needed right now.

16:34Ben Meiselas:Yeah, and I see that you're part of the lineup of the Grand Park Music Festival in Chicago and you're playing in other venues where you're giving people hope there and areas too that, you know, the Trump regime is attacking. And so, but before we go, anything else you wanted to mention before we go? No, no. I think when the National Symphony Orchestra has opportunities to play like at Wolf Trap and they're playing other venues, I really would love to see people in the D.C. area support that. The National Symphony Orchestra is not the Kennedy Center, and they're some of the finest musicians in the country, and they're just basically held hostage inside a building with someone spray painted their name on the outside.

17:21No one shows up to their shows anymore. And that's what I would tell people.

17:25Ben Meiselas:Ben Folds, thanks for joining us again. Thanks, Ben. Everybody hit subscribe. Let's get to 6 million subscribers. Want to stay plugged in? Become a subscriber to our sub stack at MidasPlus.com. You'll get daily recaps from Ron Filipkowski, ad-free episodes of our podcast, and more exclusive content only available at MidasPlus.com.

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