Ben Folds

It's really sad.

It, you know, the Kennedy Center had so many great missions, and it is a memorial as well.

It's as close to sacred stuff as you can get for our federal government.

But, you know, aside from that, it really is playing out roughly the way that it felt it would for me a year ago.

uh and i'm not saying that i understood how events would unfold exactly but it was clearly the first step

uh of uh it was it was an authoritarian move it was an authoritarian first first step and like obviously they weren't going to start by trying to steamroller late night comedians they thought they would run over us first and that's that's much easier because it's close to home and they know what they're you know how to do it um but now the things that are happening are no surprise because

That's, you know, it wasn't just him.

I think people misunderstand.

It's not just him going in wanting to book bands or something, you know, it's, it's commandeering, you know, the, the, the governments, the, the, the arts.

And then from there,

That's expression.

That's freedom of expression.

And from there, you move on to the networks and to Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel and 60 Minutes and you just keep steamrolling.

So I was sick on my stomach when I quit because one, I knew they were going to run in the ground.

No wonder they were appointing

had any experience in arts administration, but that was never the point.

The point was to take that, run over it and move on.

So it's rotting over, you know, next to the Potomac in the moment.

And it's like, it's just sad, you know?

It's really sad. The Kennedy Center had so many great missions, and it is a memorial as well. It's as close to sacred stuff as you can get for our federal government. But aside from that, it really is playing out roughly the way that it felt it would for me a year ago.