Vice President JD Vance was welcomed to the Kennedy Center by a chorus of boos after he arrived at a concert 25 minutes late.
Vance and second lady Usha Vance took their seats at the iconic performing arts venue in Washington, DC for the National Symphony Orchestra on Thursday evening, featuring a programme of all-Russian music.
The start of the concert was reportedly delayed by 25 minutes upon Vance’s motorcade pulling up, with audience members having to undergo full Secret Service security checks.
In a viral clip filmed by The Guardian’s global affairs correspondent Andrew Roth, the presidential party was met with boos, whistles and jeers as they shuffled into the box tier.
“Oh, f***. S***,’ one woman can be heard saying after a person alerted her it was Vance who arrived late.
“Kill that light,” another person in the crowd shouts, seemingly eager for the performance to begin. Despite the boos, one person can be heard clapping.
According to The Guardian, the vice president appeared to acknowledge shouts from the disgruntled crowd and, with a smile and a wave, retorted: “You ruined this place!”
Richard Grenell, MAGA loyalist and the interim director of the Kennedy Center, described the audience’s behavior as “intolerant”.
In February, President Donald Trump fired the chairman of the Kennedy Center along with 13 of its trustees.
Trump, who claimed the board unanimously voted him in as the new chairman of the centre, named the second lady on its board last month as part of a purge of Democratic-appointed members. Usha Vance was on the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra’s board between 2020 and 2022.
Mr Grenell told Fox News Digital that Trump’s leadership would see a “golden age of the arts” in the nation’s capital and “sell tickets”.
Describing the hostile takeover of the venue at the time, Trump said: “We didn’t like what they were showing and various other things. We’re going to make sure that it’s good and it’s not going to be woke. There’s no more woke in this country.”
In an X post last month, Trump vowed: “NO MORE DRAG SHOWS, OR OTHER ANTI-AMERICAN PROPAGANDA – ONLY THE BEST.”
The president also appointed White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, attorney general Pam Bondi, and Fox News host Laura Ingraham to the board.
Ticket sales have since halved, according to some Kennedy Center staff members, talking to The Washington Post anonymously for fear of reprisals.
The slump in sales came as Trump’s White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt bragged: “The Kennedy Center learned the hard way that if you go woke, you will go broke.”
And it is not just audience members who resisted the changes at the Kennedy Center.
Actress and comedian Issa Rae was the first major artist to announce that she was canceling her show there. Canadian mystery writer Louise Penny then pulled out of her scheduled appearance.
Lin-Manuel Miranda and the producers of the hit musical Hamilton also withdrew from a run at the institution, which was set to take place in 2026.
