Trump Changes to Washington D.C. Are ‘Sad,’ Sort of ‘Profane’
On CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360” Monday, senior political commentator and former Obama adviser David Axelrod said President Donald Trump’s changes to Washington, D.C., were “sad and sort of unholy.”
Axelrod said, “It has, defiled, a national monument. It was created and designated by Congress as a national monument to a great president, John F. Kennedy, who was committed to the arts and actually built the thing. The center was established in 1958 by President Eisenhower. It was John F. Kennedy who really put a little behind the times, turning the place into a great center for the arts.”
He continued: “But this is the memorial that Congress chose for him after his assassination, like the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument, etc. So, to put that aside flippantly, I don’t think that will stand, given time. But the sad thing is that the president seems to be making a mistake in putting your names on buildings with grandeur. Grandeur is earned. And John F. Kennedy, his name was on that building because of what he did as president of the United States. The Lincoln Memorial is there because Abraham Lincoln saved, saved the nation and led us through the Civil War. I mean, it says a lot about who the president is and how he thinks, and it’s sad for him and sad for our country.
He added: “I worked in the White House for a few years. And I may have told you this before, but I felt a sense of awe every time I worked in that building. He walked into that building and you were there. You had a sense of history all around you. I didn’t find the building deficient in any way. I thought it was majestic in its humility. And it said something about our democracy. And all of Washington was filled with these monuments that had real meaning, and now it’s sort of profane what he’s doing there.
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