Ex-‘South Park’ writer owns Trump Kennedy Center domain names
President Trump’s hand-picked Kennedy Center board alienated artists and angered members of the Kennedy family by putting the 47th president’s name on the living memorial to the nation’s 35th president — but a comedy writer whose credits include “South Park” and “Mad TV” may have the last laugh.
Toby Morton said he saw the writing on the wall in August and proactively purchased the domain names “trumpkennedycenter.org” and “trumpkennedycenter.com” in anticipation of Trump’s decision. He said he was informed when Trump “began gutting the Kennedy Center board earlier this year” and by the president’s hints that he might try to make it a monument to him.
“I thought yes, that name was on the building,” Morton told the Washington Post.
Morton, who describes himself on Instagram as an “anti-fascist website creator,” has previously purchased domain names associated with representatives like Nancy Mace and Marjorie Taylor Greene to create parody accounts. Asked if he planned to use the Trump Kennedy Center’s websites in the same way, he said they would “absolutely reflect the absurdity of the moment.”
“The Kennedy Center has always been a cultural institution meant to outlast an administration or a personality,” Morton told the Post. “It’s meant to honor culture, not ego. Once treated as a personal brand, satire became inevitable.”
The Kennedy Center still operates under the domain name kennedy-center.org, although the top of its home page refers to the building as the Trump Kennedy Center. But Trump is facing legal changes in renaming the building, which was officially dubbed the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts by an act of Congress in 1964 after JFK’s assassination.
Trump’s hands-on approach to the Kennedy Center had consequences.
On Wednesday, jazz drummer Chuck Redd canceled the Christmas Eve show he had been performing there for nearly 20 years after Trump’s team literally added the current president’s name to the building’s facade. On Friday, Kennedy Center President Richard Grenell, a Trump appointee, sent a furious letter to Redd, threatening to sue him for $1 million over his “abrupt cancellation.”
After Trump took it upon himself to host the annual Kennedy Center Honors ceremony earlier this month, preliminary ratings for CBS’ Tuesday broadcast of the event reportedly showed the ceremony was viewed by “the smallest audience ever.”
With news feed services
