Rep. Beatty: Trump Threw a ‘Tantrum’ at Kennedy Center Board Meeting — ‘He Didn’t Get His Vanity Project’

Democratic Rep. Joyce Beatty of Ohio, a member of the Kennedy Center board and the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit that blocked Donald Trump’s plan to put his name on the center’s building, said the president threw a “tantrum” during the board meeting on September 15, after lawyers informed members that “Beatty had won” the case.

Appearing on MS NOW, Beatty said: “It was the most unprofessional thing I have ever seen or been a part of. He started with the insults, calling me an obstructionist, stupid. He said, ‘I think you’re incompetent.’ I said, ‘I know you’re incompetent.'”

Shortly before the meeting, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper ruled that the plan to add an inscription beneath the building’s signage honoring Trump’s financial contributions violated federal law and his own earlier May ruling, which ordered the Kennedy Center to remove Trump’s name from the title and the center’s signage.

Trump chairs the board, having appointed himself chairman. The board, made up mostly of his hand-picked loyalists, voted at the same meeting to immediately close most of the center for renovations, pushed by Trump.

According to Beatty, the president threatened to hold her personally responsible “if something fell from the ceiling (of the Kennedy Center) and killed someone.” She replied: “You are already killing people. We are at war. There are also people starving.”

In a post after the meeting, Trump warned he would not proceed with the renovation — which he said he would pay for with his own money — if the judge’s ruling blocking his name is not overturned. Meanwhile, the Department of Justice has appealed the ruling. The White House did not deny Beatty’s account of the meeting; spokeswoman Liz Huston said Democrats had let the center rot for decades, while Trump was “putting in the resources and leadership needed to restore the center.”

Beatty also said Trump praised his career as a developer and told her she had “done nothing” — and she reminded him “that he had more bankruptcies than anyone else in the room.” “He didn’t win. He didn’t get his vanity project. He didn’t get his name for the second time, so now he’s attacking people,” she concluded.

Source: USA Today