Katie Couric and the director of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing arts traded barbs on Saturday, and then again on Monday, after Couric called the center’s new Donald Trump-mandated direction is “a disgrace.”
It began on Saturday when, in the comments of a Kennedy Center Instagram post about an Opera performance that night, Couric wrote, “This is so sad. I grew up going to the Kennedy Center which was about 20 minutes from our house in Arlington. What they’ve done to it is a disgrace.”
Her comment received 44 replies, many of which came from angry fans of Trump — among them the current director of the Kennedy Center himself, Richard Grenell. Trump’s so-called “Special Presidential Envoy for Special Missions” replied, “we didn’t cancel a single show. Your team couldn’t perform for Republicans. They cancelled. It is this exact intolerance that we fight against. Everyone is welcome to the Kennedy Center….even you!”
That was where things lay, until Monday morning that is, when the Daily Beast published a story about it, headlined “Katie Couric starts bizarre fight with opera after DC’s Kennedy Center was taken over by MAGA.”
Shortly after, the Kennedy Center’s Instagram account posted a screenshot of the story and shared a link. Accompanying these were restatement of what Grenell said two days earlier and a belittling honorific: “The Kennedy Center is for EVERYONE. That includes Mrs. Couric.”
Couric’ responded laconically, commenting, ‘s laconic response: “This is hilarious. And it’s Ms. Couric to you.”
Interestingly, the majority of replies this time came from people criticizing (or mocking) the Kennedy Center’s social media team for posting about the Daily Mail’s article in the first place. That may be why when Grenell posted about the article himself, he did so over on X, where he declared “@katiecouric is so mad that everyone is welcome at the @kencen. @DailyMail.”
Grenell’s X post does not however appear to have sparked a larger backlash, for now at least. As of this writing it has received only 139 replies.
