Kaitlan Collins Sounds the Alarm on Donald Trump's Obsession With Vanity Projects

CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins strongly criticized President Donald Trump's persistent efforts to brand public institutions with his name on the Thursday, August 13, broadcast of her show The Source.

This followed a controversial vote by the Kennedy Center Board of Trustees to pursue a "creative workaround" to circumvent a federal judge's order blocking the renaming of the historic performing arts venue.

The board voted to add a new inscription below the main signage reading "Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump.”

In May, U.S. District Court Judge Christopher Cooper ruled that the board acted unlawfully when it initially voted to change the venue's name to "The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts."

The judge clarified that only Congress holds the authority to change the center's name.

The new inscription remains hidden behind protective tarps under security watch, and legal experts expect the move to end up back in court.

Democratic leadership has strongly condemned the board's actions as a lack of transparency and an abuse of power.

During The Source broadcast, Collins detailed how this situation mirrors a broader pattern of self-branding throughout Trump's second term.

“The president’s focus has not just been on the Kennedy Center in terms of his broader push to remake Washington. It’s also his penchant for branding everything in his name,” Collins detailed. “That includes the gold coins, the Trump passports, the National Park passes, the Palm Beach airport — I’m not done — the banner at the Justice Department, the new class of battleships. There are many things, not just in Washington, but all across the nation now bearing the Trump name.”

The New York Times correspondent Shawn McCreesh noted that while these branding disputes may seem like small issues in isolation, they collectively highlight a highly unusual focus on personal legacy over standard governance.

“I think what’s interesting about the Kennedy Center is that it reminds me of the [Lincoln Memorial] Reflecting Pool and how they kept trying all those cases that were going to fall apart. There’s, you know, these are technically small things that don‘t affect tens of millions of people or global trade. It’s not an issue of war and peace. And yet the smallness of these incidents have a way of magnifying how strange the behavior of the royal court around Trump is,” McCreesh said.

“I think it’s very strange that a board of people who are loyal to him got together today and said, no, we are going to scrape your name on the wall after we‘ve been told to take it off. That‘s very unique behavior,” McCreesh concluded.

“‘Unique’ is a word for it,” quipped Collins.

On Friday, August 14, the Trump administration filed an emergency petition asking the U.S. Supreme Court to block a lower court order and allow above-ground construction to resume on his controversial $400 million White House ballroom project.

The request follows an August 7 ruling by a divided three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which held that Trump lacked the unilateral authority to build the massive structure on federal property without explicit congressional approval. Government lawyers urged the high court to intervene before the lower court's stop-work order officially takes effect on August 21.