Jimmy Kimmel Mocks Donald Trump With New Name for Kennedy Center Amid Renovation Fight: 'He's Holding the Building Hostage'

Jimmy Kimmel fired a brutal dig at Donald Trump as he monologued about the president's ongoing fight to get his name slapped onto the Kennedy Center.

The comedian, long a thorn in Trump's side, set his sights on the ongoing Kennedy Center fiasco on the September 16 edition of Jimmy Kimmel Live!.

During a 15-minute monologue that covered a wide array of topics, including Kash Patel's defense of hiring FBI applicants who were "victims of b---------," Kimmel discussed how Trump's "handpicked board" voted to close the center for repairs on September 15.

“Yesterday, Trump’s handpicked board at the Kennedy Center voted to close for renovations, moments after a judge ruled they cannot add Trump’s name to the building without approval from Congress,” Kimmel said.

“So now the big baby says if the Supreme Court doesn’t overturn that ruling and put his name on the wall next to Kennedy’s, there will be no renovations at all."

He then fired off a snide suggestion for the president.

“He’s holding the building hostage,” he said. “They really should call it the Melania Trump Kennedy Center.”

The fight over the Kennedy Center has been going on ever since Donald began his second term. The president threw his name on the building in 2025, but was ordered by a judge to remove it, noting only Congress could rename a federal building.

Since then, he's been trying to get a plaque commemorating his efforts in renovating the Kennedy Center affixed to the title. That effort is currently held up in court.

The Kennedy Center's board of Trump loyalists have argued that adding the president's name to the building is the only way to prevent it from going bankrupt, saying he will pony up the funds to fix the building only if he gets recognition.

Kennedy Center documents suggest that the president's mismanagement of the arts center is exactly why it's suffering financially.

The board's initial efforts to do away with "woke programming" turned donors and attendees away. Then, after he improperly added his name to the building, donations and ticket sales "dropped off a cliff."

The name controversy "was just an absolute fiscal cliff. Donors disappeared, ticket sales disappeared, artists disappeared — like it was doomsday,” an anonymous Kennedy Center insider told The Washington Post.

The 58-year-old late-night host has long made fun of the apparently frosty relationship between the 80-year-old president and his wife.

Infamously, he joked in April that Melania had the glow of an "expectant widow" during one of his monologues. Two days later, there was an attempt on the president's life at the White House Correspondents' Dinner.

The attempted shooting led Melania and Republicans to call for Kimmel to be canceled for "inciting violence," though the late night host did nothing of the sort.