00:00I'll be very quick. First of all, how great is it to have a president who actually cares about the Art Center?
00:13That's what I love best, is that he actually cares. He came, he saw the problem, and he immediately said,
00:21I'm going to call Congress and we're going to try to fix it.
00:23This is traditionally a Democrat territory, except President Trump says, I want to do this.
00:32I have to tell you, President Trump is actually saving the Kennedy Center, because there is discussion right now of whether or not to take it down.
00:42The deferred maintenance of the Kennedy Center is criminal. It has been terrible.
00:49Mr. President, we said today in our board meeting, our great new CFO went through the 24 and 25 budgets of the Kennedy Center
00:59and found $26 million in phantom revenue, fake revenue. It's criminal.
01:06We're going to refer this to the U.S. Attorney's Office here.
01:12We're lucky enough to have the Attorney General on the board of the Kennedy Center.
01:16We heard all the details today. She heard the details.
01:21And this is unacceptable in America to have a fake revenue of $26 million fraud on previous donors.
01:34It's unacceptable. But I'm here to tell you that what we have is total transparency now.
01:40We want people to go through the budget. We want them to question it.
01:44We announced our program today, which is literally shocking the media, because they're saying,
01:52OK, this is pretty good.
01:55We're not getting criticized for the programming, because guess what, Mr. President?
02:00When you pick programs that are popular with the public, they respond.
02:06People buy tickets.
02:07It is popular when you do programming for the masses.
02:14As I said today, I am somebody who loves niche programming in the arts.
02:20I am somebody who embraces it.
02:21It's not for everybody, but I like to be challenged by the arts.
02:25I like it when somebody can teach me and make me a little bit uncomfortable in a show.
02:30But one thing that we're not going to do at the Kennedy Center is inappropriate content for children.
02:36We're going to protect children.
02:38And we're going to make sure that we are absolutely not losing money on our program.
02:43We can't do arts education if we don't have enough money and we have fake revenue coming in.
02:50So I promise you, and this board today responded incredibly well, I can't thank you all enough.
02:58Jennifer, thank you for being the chair.
03:00Thank you for every single board member.
03:03Your commitment is amazing.
03:05And as President Trump said, we're going to do great things.
03:08Everyone needs to go out and buy tickets to Les Mis and Corgi Invest, which are currently being, right now, about to launch.
03:19We're building the stages and we're getting ready to have premier entertainment at America's premier arts institution.
