Whoopi Goldberg: 'I have no plans to go back to the Kennedy Center' amid Trump's takeover
Whoopi Goldberg says she has "no plans to go back to the Kennedy Center" in the wake of President Trump's takeover of the Washington performing arts institution.
"The View" co-host made her pronouncement during a Thursday discussion on the daytime talk show about "Hamilton" producers saying they were canceling plans for the Broadway musical to perform at the Kennedy Center next year after Trump booted much of its board last month and named himself its chair.
Trump said at the time of the Kennedy Center moves, "We’re going make sure that it’s good and it’s not going be woke."
"The fact that it wasn't a discussion, it was a big smack to the arts — which don't have a politics. The politics are, look at the differences in the actors. That's the real statement," Goldberg said of the diverse cast of "Hamilton."
"So I understand why they did it," Goldberg, who received the Kennedy Center's Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in 2001, said of the "Hamilton" producers' move.
"I have no plans to go back to the Kennedy Center until the Kennedy Center becomes what it was supposed to be, and that was a welcome place for all artists, no matter what your groove is," she said.
"They didn't make judgments about the people that they put in," the 69-year-old actor and comedian added.
Goldberg also pushed back against her "View" co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin, who said that while she loved the arts hub, "I don't know that in the middle of the country, this is like a real controversy or scandal."
"Most people don't have the benefit of getting to go to the Kennedy Center," Farah Griffin said.
"Here's the thing, people outside of New York watch the Kennedy Center Honors," Goldberg said of the annual ceremony. In 2023, Goldberg appeared at the Kennedy Center Honors to present recipient Billy Crystal with the prestigious award.
"They've seen extraordinary things. So things that you can't see in your town, you've been able to watch," she said.
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