Last week, President Donald Trump’s name was emblazoned across the Kennedy Center’s building facade, website and social media accounts. The organization’s new name is the Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts, after what the White House claimed was a unanimous vote by the board of directors. Experts say changing the Kennedy Center’s name is illegal.
However, the Kennedy Center is not the current owner of trumpkennedycenter.org or trumpkennedycenter.com. Comedy writer Toby Morton registered these two domain names in August, hoping that Trump and his allies would add Trump’s name to a Washington, D.C., landmark.
“When President Trump started demolishing the Kennedy Center Board of Directors earlier this year, I thought, ‘Yes, this building is going to have that name on it,'” Morton recently told The Washington Post. “The Kennedy Center has always been a cultural institution meant to outlive any particular regime or individual. It’s meant to celebrate culture, not ego. Once it was treated like personal branding, satire became inevitable.”
Morton has been active in acquiring domain names and using them to troll politicians. Morton is credited as a writer on South Park and Mad TV (he also provided the voice of Scott Tennerman, Eric Cartman’s half-brother and nemesis, on South Park). Morton, whose Blue Sky bio lists him as a “creator of anti-fascist websites,” does not currently have a website at trumpkennedycenter.org or trumpkennedycenter.com. But he promised that when it does, “it will be a complete reflection of the absurdity of the moment. There will be a lot of surprises. But there are some things that are really hard to parody.”
Variety has reached out to the Kennedy Center Press Office for comment.
In a post on Blue Sky this week, Morton marveled at the supportive comments from readers who responded to the Post’s article. “I’m used to hateful comments, so the comments from the Washington Post article are really refreshing. It’s also nice to know that some of my longtime heroes are now quietly joining in. Pro tip: You might want to stay away from institutions like the Kennedy Center. Support is growing. Watch this space.”
According to the Washington Post, Morton runs about 50 political parody sites. mtg2026.org, which satirizes Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.). nancymace26.com, a fake site mocking Congresswoman Nancy Grace (R-South Carolina). and resignchuck.com, targeted at Democratic Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.).
