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Trump Addresses a Kennedy Center Board Dinner, May 19, 2025

May 19, 2025 · The White House · 0:41:26

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

President Donald Trump addressed a Kennedy Center board dinner on May 19, 2025, carried on the White House channel in an upload published just after midnight UTC on May 20. He opened with the day’s diplomacy, telling the guests about “my little conversation with a nice gentleman named Vladimir Putin”: “We had a good talk, and I think that progress is being made. Five thousand young soldiers are being killed every single week on average,” he said, as he characterized the war’s toll and the call he had held earlier that day. He recapped the Middle East trip as he stated its results: “We brought back about $5.1 trillion,” with “hundreds of planes” ordered from Boeing, as he stated the figures.

Turning to the evening’s purpose, the President — who chairs the Kennedy Center board — delivered his verdict on the building: “We’re going to bring this place back. It’s not so good. I thought it was going to be beautiful. I hadn’t been there in a while. I said, this is going to be beautiful. It’s not looking too good. But we’re going to bring it back,” he said. Of the money spent there, he said: “Lindsey Graham and some people put in the budget either $200 or $250 million. Money was spent there. Tremendous amounts of money was spent there over the last ten years. I don’t know where they spent it. They certainly didn’t spend it on wallpaper, carpet, or painting,” as he stated the figures and the claim.

Why it matters

This dinner is the President’s own condition report on the Kennedy Center he now chairs: the rebuild vow, the $200–250 million spending question as he stated it, and the Putin-call and Middle East readouts he chose to give the board the same evening.

Scoreboard watch

This dinner is a scoreboard reference point: the President’s May 19, 2025 statements that $200–250 million had been spent on the Kennedy Center over ten years without visible result, as stated by the President, to be checked against the center’s accounts and the renovation record.

Sources: The White House, “President Trump Participates in a Kennedy Center Board Dinner” (official upload, embedded above; dinner of May 19, 2025, uploaded May 20, 2025 UTC). All figures and characterizations as stated by the President.