Hannah Rosen

There was no mainstream press there, just administration officials and tech people.

And then shortly after that, Trump announced he was closing the Kennedy Center for this two-year renovation to build what he called a new and spectacular entertainment complex.

In your head, are these two events connected?

It is like the Trump administration's open wish to control the culture.

And then there's the sort of two possibilities of it.

Like I was thinking on the one hand.

You know, I have read about days when there were state run television, you know, where you'd have like ballets and operas about great administration triumphs and there would be Melania films every day and we could all go see them.

You know, like that is a world we've read about in history.

And it did feel to me like that, like some weird authoritarian future of culture.

On the other hand, like you said, it felt kind of sad.

Like there is no state run television in a world of infinite sources of entertainment.

That's impossible.

And so it just feels a little like failure in a way for rich donors to curry favor.

Like it's hard to see how it's going to take off.

You know, it's like both scary, but also seems maybe not possible.

I guess the mid possibility is that it's propaganda that works some of the time.

Like, OK, we can discuss this around the Melania film and immigration.

Like the film was coming out around the time of the Minneapolis shootings and the sort of mayhem in Minneapolis and the tragedy there.

Melania is maybe the most famous immigrant in the U.S.

right now.