If there’s one thing Donald Trump craves as much as power, it’s crowd size. Unfortunately for him, he’s getting none of the latter from audiences after remaking the Kennedy Center in his image. His D.C. occupation will probably make things worse. Good.

Via The Guardian:

Audiences are “voting with their feet to skip out” on shows that would once have been packed, in protest at the US president inserting himself into the center’s management and operations as its new chairman, amid discussions around the notion of renaming it after Trump, according to an analysis by the Washingtonian magazine.

The outlet said the Stuttgart Ballet’s series at the Kennedy complex’s Opera House in October is only “between 4 and 19%” full based on reservations so far, and BodyTraffic, a Los Angeles troupe booked for two performances in the smaller Eisenhower Theatre at the end of the month, is only booked so far at 12% capacity.

I’ll go out on a limb and predict that the plans by Kennedy Center president and Trump toady, Ric Grenell, will do nothing to reverse the trend. According to Washingtonian, Grenell wants “a more middle-American Kennedy Center and pursues collaborations with the Museum of the Bible and the Christian Broadcasting Network.” He has already installed a “MAGA former dancer” as the head of the Center’s dance programming and fired the former dance programming team.

Predictably, Grenell is pretending it’s not his fault he and Trump have turned the Kennedy Center into such a flop.

More via Washingtonian:

The fired dance staff say Grenell blamed elitist programming for poor ticket sales, not a widespread boycott of the Kennedy Center by local dance enthusiasts. He told Miller and Burnett that the center should instead be booking acts like performers from So You Think You Can Dance. Tours connected to television shows do typically stop in the Washington area, but at smaller, suburban venues like the Theater at MGM National Harbor.

Not surprisingly, the Center was doing much better with its “elitist programming” until Trump installed his lickspittle to run it. “Subscription revenue is down by about 50 percent,” Washingtonian reported.

Keep it up, arts lovers! Trump and his fascist flunkies deserve the humiliation.