WASHINGTON—Ambassador Richard Grenell is pushing back after Democrat Senator Sheldon Whitehouse “attacked” President Donald Trump’s Kennedy Center leadership team with “outrageous” claims.
Grenell, the acting president of the Kennedy Center, joined Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures” with Maria Bartiromo to discuss the Rhode Island Democrat’s recent claims that the Center was “being looted to the tune of millions of dollars in foregone revenue, cancelled programming, unpaid use of its facilities, and wasteful spending on luxury restaurants and hotels —an unprecedented pattern of self-dealing, favoritism, and waste.”
“Contracts, invoices, and facility use agreements reveal that you operate the Center for the enrichment of your friends and acquaintances, to dole out political favors, and as a playground for the President of the United States and his allies,” Whitehouse wrote in a letter earlier this month.
Grenell told Bartiromo that Whitehouse, “who’s on the Kennedy Center board, should show up for some of these meetings. He hasn’t been to a single meeting. If he had gone to the meetings, he would understand that President Trump has saved the Kennedy Center.”
Whitehouse’s most explosive claims include that Trump allowed FIFA, the international soccer organization, to use the campus for “free” from November 24 through December 12, 2025. Whitehouse also claimed that Trump and his Kennedy Center team had awarded “contracts for personal friends,” and provided “lavish meals and entertainment, luxury hotel accommodations for friends and staff,” and “discounted rentals to political allies.”
Grenell addresssed Whitehouse’s attacks in writing earlier this month, saying that the Democrat’s claims “did not undergo basic fact-checking” and were “filled with partisan attacks and false accusations.”
“Your staff relied on anonymous sources, inaccurate gossip, and allegations from partisan reporters who never had access to the data or facts I’m happy to provide below,” Grenell wrote.
Grenell explained that the FIFA has given them “several million dollars, in addition to paying all of the expenses for this event in lieu of a rental fee.”
“Your focus on simple rental fees is no way to run an institution as diverse as the Kennedy Center,” Grenell explained. “A simple rental fee would not have been enough to cover the magnitude of the event.”
The ambassador elaborated on that point to Bartiromo, noting that what Democrats attempt to smear as corporate handouts is really the administration’s attempts to use corporate sponsorship to get the center back in the black — a heavy lift, considering how the Biden administration left things.
“The books were a mess when I walked in. We were paying staff with debt reserves,” Grenell told Bartiromo. “We didn’t have money in the bank. It was chaos when it came to programming. What President Trump said was ‘let’s clean it up.'”
“FIFA is giving the Kennedy Center multimillions of dollars — much more than what a rental’s revenue would have been — plus they are covering all expenses,” Kennedy Center Vice President of Public Relations Roma Daravi told The Daily Wire, adding that it’s “no surprise that democrat Senator Whitehouse and his team purposely shared misleading information with the New York Times and Washington Post — and none of them cared if any of it was true.”
“The press and the Senator should be ashamed of the lies they print and reprint — we want a cultural center for all Americans but they push lies to sow division amongst Americans for their selfish moment in a headline,” Daravi said.
Whitehouse did not respond to a request for comment.
Grenell stressed that he takes financial responsibility “extremely seriously” and said that when he took charge, they were paying a “bloated staff” and there were 94 people in the development department, which they’ve now reduced down to 16. This saved the department $4 million in one department alone, Grenell said.
He said his predecessor was making over $1.2 million a year and the “deferred maintenance” of the building was “quite literally making the building fall apart.”
For the first time in decades, Grenell said the Kennedy Center has a balanced budget — and highlighted ways they have cut costs.
Grenell outlined items such as food and beverage costs and meetings that are now a “fraction” of their previous costs under previous leadership. He also noted that they had rolled back some of the “woke” programming in rotation under the Biden administration, in a bid to boost profits and make the Kennedy Center a place where every American could enjoy the arts.
“Of course they cry when we try to bring it to the middle,” Grenell told Bartiromo. “They’re losing their woke programming.”
The Kennedy Center has repeatedly made headlines since Trump took office. The president made reforming the Center a top priority and dismissed the Center’s board, appointing himself chairman. In March, The Daily Wire’s Tim Rice exclusively reported that the Kennedy Center was $40 million in debt and preparing to “reduce expenses” to address what it called a “difficult” financial situation.
Speaking to Bartiromo, Grenell stressed that his approach was different to his predecessors’, noting that he was committed to radical transparency. Whitehouse and others “can see exactly what we’re doing,” he said.
Daravi issued a statement last week noting that the Kennedy Center team raised $58 million in 35 days and since then has been raising even more money with events. The next day, Grenell shared a report noting that the Democrat Party has raised $75 million so far this year, while the Kennedy Center has brought in more than double that amount — over $117 million.
“People are giving more to the Kennedy Center than the Democrat Party,” Grenell said. “Say it louder for the reporters in the back.”
