SHOW STOPPER: Following an exodus of performers who refuse to appear at the Kennedy Center in Washington while it’s under the control of Donald Trump, the President announced that he’s closing the center for two years for a major construction project.

  “I have determined that The Trump Kennedy Center, if temporarily closed for Construction, Revitalization, and Complete Rebuilding, can be, without question, the finest Performing Arts Facility of its kind, anywhere in the World,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social feed.”

  The center will close on July 4^th. 

  Trump said this is contingent on board approval, but he appointed the board and it does what he orders, including putting his name on the entertainment center built and named for the assassinated President John F. Kennedy. The center had a $250 million renovation in 2019, but Trump doesn’t like the result.

  As usual, promising that anything he touches will be the most beautiful and greatest, Trump said, “I have determined that the fastest way to bring The Trump Kennedy Center to the highest level of Success, Beauty, and Grandeur, is to cease Entertainment Operations for an approximately two year period of time, with a scheduled Grand Reopening that will rival and surpass anything that has taken place with respect to such a Facility before.”
 

THE EPSTEIN REVELATIONS: President Trump was furious last night after host Trevor Noah said at the Grammy awards that the President had visited the private island of sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Trump wrote on his Truth Social, “It looks like I’ll be sending my lawyers to sue this poor, pathetic, talentless, dope of an M.C., and suing him for plenty$.”

   The millions of documents released from the files on Epstein include 5,300 files with mentions of Donald Trump, according to a review by The NY Times. Those mentions include unverified reports of Trump involved in sexual encounters.

  One such report from the files says, “(Name redacted) reported an unidentified female friend who was forced to perform oral sex on President Trump approximately 35 years ago.”

  The Times reports that Trump is one of half a dozen prominent men about whom the agency’s files includes “salacious information.” The Epstein files appear to include many reports and accusations that were never verified or investigated, and Trump is among them.

  Another such report says, “Caller named other individuals involved in “big orgy parties” with her, including other young girls, ad older Victoria’s Secret models, including Bill Clinton and Donald Trump.”

  For a response, the Miami Herald was directed to a Department of Justice statement that said in part, “To be clear, the claims are unfounded and false, and if they have a shred of credibility, they certainly would have been weaponized against President Trump already.”

THE REGIME:

— Liam Ramos, the 5-year-old detained by ICE agents while he was wearing a knit hat with bunny ears was released along with his father on orders of a federal judge. The picture of Liam in his hat and a Spiderman backpack became the image of ICE cruelty in its quest to round up “the worst of the worst” of illegal immigrants.

  The Ramos family is still in legal proceedings to gain permission for permanent residence in the US.  The judge’s order said, “The case has its genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children.”

— Republican politicians are in shock after a Texas Democrat won a special election for a state senate seat in a district that Donald Trump won by 17 points in 2025. Taylor Rehmet, a local union leader and first-time candidate, beat the Republican, Leigh Wambsganss, by 57 to 43 percent of the vote.

— Donald Trump spoke Saturday night at the exclusive Alfalfa Club dinner in Washington for the first time since 2017. The President delivered a comedy monologue obviously written by someone who’s funny, but when Trump delivers it you can never tell if he’s joking.

  “We’re not going to invade Greenland. We’re going to buy it,” he said. “It’s never been my intention to make Greenland the 51st state. I want to make Canada the 51st state. Greenland will be the 52nd state. Venezuela can be 53rd.”

  After the dinner Trump flew to his Florida home for a visit of less than 24 hours.

AND THE AWARD GOES TO: Accepting a Grammy Award last night, the artist known as Bad Bunny said to loud cheers, “Before I say thanks to God, I’m gonna say ‘ICE out’.”

  Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio otherwise known as Bad Bunny, who is Puerto Rican, went on, “We’re not savage, we’re not animals, we’re not aliens, we’re humans and we are Americans.” 

THE SPIN RACK: In a step forward for peace, the Rafah crossing point between Gaza and Egypt was reopened yesterday after being closed for 20 months. — It’s Groundhog Day and during a brutal cold spell Punxsutawney Phil in Pennsylvania will predict whether there will be six more weeks of winter.

BELOW THE FOLD: The first lady’s vanity documentary “Melania” exceeded expectations earning $8 million in its opening weekend, actually a good performance for a documentary. But in some theaters the audience of a half dozen people was all journalists.

  As for the reviews …

  Variety said the doc is so “orchestrated and airbrushed and stage-managed that it barely rises to the level of a shameless infomercial.” The Hollywood Reporter’s review says the film “fawns so lavishly over its subject that you feel downright unpatriotic not gushing over it.”

  Amazon paid $40 million for the film … $28 million direct to Melania … and $35 million to promote it, a transaction that can’t be considered anything less than a laundered payoff. 

  The Guardian critic Xan Brooks wrote that Melania “moves through the action like a listless automaton, talking constantly but saying nothing.” The Independent’s Nick Hilton called the first lady a “scowling void of pure nothingness in this ghastly bit of propaganda.” 

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