The “REACH” at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, which was recently renamed the “Trump Kennedy Center,” is seen in Washington on Tuesday. President Donald Trump’s name being added on December 19, a day after his hand-picked board members voted to rename the venue. Photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI | License Photo
Of all the extraordinary events of 2025, one of the most amazing and inexplicable is why Donald J. Trump seems to be channeling John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
Despite the exceptional display of bad taste and vulgarity by inserting his name above that of Kennedy’s in renaming the Center for the Performing Arts, that was no accident. For reasons known only to himself, is Trump attempting to remake himself in Kennedy’s image?
Consider the evidence: While the Kennedys made the White House the center of culture with invitations to the most creative members of society in the arts, science and other fields, Trump is doing the same with the new East Wing ballroom. He is trying to bring the cultural splendor of the Kennedys with a Mar-a-Lago twist to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
But, more importantly, while Trump is crafting his actions in line with Making America Great Again and America First, is he stating in a profoundly different, yet eerily similar way, JFK’s promise “to pay any price and bear any burden … to assure the survival of liberty”?
Consider Trump’s most recent use of force in that context with the Kennedy promise.
In Venezuela, as in Vietnam, Trump is trying to protect Americans from the scourge of drugs just as Kennedy intended to stop the equally dangerous spread of communism at the Mekong and not the Mississippi.
While Lyndon Johnson inherited the mantle of assuring liberty, he ordered the retaliatory bombing of North Vietnam in August 1964 to punish Hanoi for a PT boat attack it did not make against two U.S. destroyers. Aside from the United States sinking hapless speedboats, the CIA just attacked an east coast Venezuelan port with drones.
But Venezuela — just as North Vietnam did not launch an attack against U.S. warships — is not sending drugs to America. So why the escalation? And if the Vietnam analogy continues, do we expect to see U.S. special or clandestine forces on the ground in Venezuela much like we conducted a not-so-secret war in Southeast Asia?
There is one huge difference.
President Lyndon Johnson operated under the Tonkin Gulf Resolution that authorized force. Trump does not believe he needs one as commander-in-chief. And Republicans in Congress do not seem inclined to carry out their responsibilities or to enforce the War Powers Act that requires congressional approval for the continued use of military force beyond 60y days. And Trump is not limiting his Kennedy channeling.
Over last weekend, Trump approved cruise missile strikes against Nigeria’s Boko Haram terrorist organization, retaliating for its killing of Christians. Why Trump did that either reflects JFK to defend the liberty of Christians or the need to placate his born-again Christian supporters.
In Venezuela and now Nigeria, it would seem that physical military attacks against those bases were some form of a declaration of war. Trump also authorized cruise missile attacks against ISIS targets in Somalia.
While this churn was occurring, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian declared that his country is engaged in a “full-fledged war with America, Israel, and Europe.”
In a sense, this is becoming a tragicomedy and farce and a throwback to the 1960s. Recall the Kingston Trio’s Merry Little Minuet, with the final verse that went: “They’re rioting in Africa; There’s strife in Iran; What nature doesn’t do us; Will be done by our fellow man.”
An even better parallel is the 1959 film that made Peter Sellers famous, The Mouse that Roared.
The imaginary kingdom of the Duchy of Fenwick had only one product: wine. A California winery made a knockoff product that captured the market. A desperate Fenwick decided that the only solution was to declare war on the United State and then be saved by losing.
Instead, the hapless Fenwickians, en route to Washington via New York to surrender, stumbled on the infamous U.S. Q-bomb — the deadliest weapon in the world — and became the most powerful state on Earth. But it was only a movie!
Perhaps Trump is not really channeling JFK. But what Trump has been doing so far might better be explained by verse and movie. Yet, this is deadly serious. The United States cannot continue to bomb or attack any and all places of its choosing without justification or purpose. This then becomes farce. And farce is no way to run a country, especially when lives are at stake.
Harlan Ullman is UPI’s Arnaud de Borchgrave Distinguished Columnist, senior adviser at Washington’s Atlantic Council, chairman of a private company and principal author of the doctrine of shock and awe. His next book, co-written with Field Marshal The Lord David Richards, former U.K. chief of defense and due out next year, is Who Thinks Best Wins: Preventing Strategic Catastrophe. The writer can be reached on X @harlankullman.
