IT’S A TEARDOWN: Is Donald Trump thinking about tearing down the Kennedy Center?

  A news photographer captured a picture through the windows of Air Force One that suggests President Trump is contemplating just that. The picture reveals Trump holding and reviewing a poster that said in large letters, “Kennedy Center DEMOLISHED.”

  Trump earlier this week said that the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts in Washington would “end up being ripped down” without his support, adding, “It’s in very, very bad shape, very dangerous shape.”

  The center is still standing but it is closed and workers have begun erecting fencing around it. The administration told federal judge Christopher Cooper that the center had to be closed due to “structural deterioration” it characterized as posing “untenable risks” to safety.

  Cooper ruled that the administration must give 30 days notice if it intends to demolish the center.

  Trump engineered the shutdown of the Kennedy Center because Judge Cooper has blocked his name from being put on the building without a vote by Congress. Trump seems willing to abandon or destroy the Kennedy Center unless he gets credit in granite for “saving” it.

YOU HAVE A FRIEND: Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. yesterday told the anti-vaccine organization he founded that he plans to investigate the so-called “chem trails” that conspiracy theorists claim are chemical or biological agents. Chem trails have already been proven to merely be the vapor trails left by jet aircraft. 

  “We’re also looking at chem trails and the impact of emissions from aircraft and this potential impacts on health,” he said to a gathering of the Children’s Health Defense group.

  Kennedy fed the chem trail conspiracy theory last year claiming, “It’s done, we think, by DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) and a lot of it now is coming out of the jet fuel. Those materials are put in jet fuel.” 

  Kennedy also told his audience of vaccine skeptics and opponents that they have a “strong and steadfast friend at the White House.” He said he would “die with my boots on” pursuing answers about the risks of vaccines.

  Kennedy’s remarks were a direct challenge to the scientific and medical wisdom about the extraordinary efficacy of vaccines.

  The health secretary spoke following Mark Gordon, president of the MAHA Institute who called the success of the polio vaccine a “fraud.” 

POLITICAL PROSECUTOR: Attorney general Todd Blanche in recent days has violated Justice Department protocol by speaking at political rallies on behalf of Republican candidates.

  On Wednesday, Blanche spoke at a campaign rally for Michael Whatley, the Republican Senate candidate in North Carolina. Earlier in the month he spoke at the Republican party’s mid-term convention and last month he campaigned for Bruce Blakeman, the Republican candidate for governor of New York.

  Blanche has been wearing a lot of hats recently, including standing in for the resigned White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt and briefing the press.

THE WAR ROOM: President Trump told the news outlet Axios that he’s at a crossroads over whether to renew attacks on Iran to wipe out the regime and end the war.

  “I have a big decision coming up. Do I want to go in and annihilate them or do I not?” he said. “It’s a big decision. Anything could happen with me.”

  The Iranian regime says nothing good will happen until Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Bejamin Netayahu are thrown out of office. 

  “Our fighters will not open the Strait of Hormuz until the criminal Trump and the bloodthirsty Netanyahu are pulled down from the seat of power, and this is the first stage of the Iranian nation’s revenge,” said Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, a political adviser to Iran’s absent-from-public Supreme Leader. 

 INFINITE SCROLL:

— Former staff members of the Institute of Peace removed by the Trump Administration asked a federal court to prevent the carving of President Trump’s name into the facade of the institute’s headquarters in downtown Washington.

  The Trump administration seized and took over the non-profit institute last March. Lawyers for the institute’s ousted leadership said that engraving Mr. Trump’s name on the building would cause “irreparable harm” because the organization’s independent mission is separate from the federal government. Trump’s name is already on the building in large silver letters glued to the façade.

THE OBIT PAGE: Peter Max, the colorful artist of the psychedelic age of Day-Glo paint, flower power, bellbottom jeans, and Volkswagen mini-buses, died Monday in Manhattan at age 88.

  Max rendered on canvas in bright colors and wild imagery the 1960s culture and politics of love, joy, and often chemically-induced expanded consciousness. Oddly for the time though, he didn’t drink or do drugs … he expanded his mind through yoga.

  For a time Max’s work decorated the walls of colleges dormitories and low-rent apartments as their young residents got stoned and listened to music.

  Max’s lasting image “Cosmic Jumper,” a man in a bright blue suit and orange top hat appearing to sprint across the globe against a sunset was used for a 10 cent postage stamp in 1974 that said, “Preserve the Environment.”

THE SPIN RACK: Warren Buffett, the 96-year-old founder of the investment behemoth Berkshire Hathaway, says he’s stepping down as chairman and handing the reins to his 71-year-old son, Howard. Buffett said, “Father time always wins.” —Defensive coordinator Steve Belichick, son of North Carolina head football coach Bill Belichick, resigned following an investigation into the culture of the program. The younger Belichick has been on medical leave with reported drug issues. — Alabama yesterday executed a 49-year-old man by lethal injection three months after the Supreme Court blocked the state from using nitrogen gas to do the job. The condemned man, Jefferey Lee, had argued that the gas would cause unnecessary suffering. 

BELOW THE FOLD: President Trump frequently falls asleep in public, most recently at the 9/11 memorial at the Pentagon. Late night comic Jimmy Kimmel has nicknamed Trump “Teddy Doze-evelt.” 

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