

Before President Donald Trump ever suggested rebranding the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts after himself, comedian Toby Morton (Blunders, Breakups & Babies) was already one step ahead. A former writer for South Park and Mad TV, Morton anticipated the move last August, securing a few key digital assets just months before the idea became public, according to Deadline.
Morton successfully secured the domain names trumpkennedycenter.org and trumpkennedycenter.com. Deadline says his foresight proved accurate when the Kennedy Center’s Trump-appointed board recently moved forward with a formal rebranding. In Washington, D.C., workers have already begun installing new signage to reflect the building’s new title: The Donald Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.
After Trump “began gutting the Kennedy Center board earlier this year,” Morton explained that he decided to purchase the domain names in an interview with the Washington Post, via Deadline.
“I thought, Yep, that name’s going on the building,” Morton said in the interview. “The rest followed on schedule.” This isn’t Morton’s first time claiming digital territory. The comedian has built a reputation for snapping up domain names tied to prominent politicians–including Marjorie Taylor Greene, Nancy Mace, and Chuck Schumer–and transforming them into satirical parody sites that critique their legislative records, according to Deadline.
Morton, whose professional credits include some of TV’s most irreverent comedies, plans to use his latest digital acquisitions to lampoon the Kennedy Center’s rebranding. Deadline says that Morton, who describes his online work as a form of activism, noted that while the new sites will be full of “surprises,” the actual events unfolding are so bizarre they almost defy satire.
The renaming of the institution has triggered a significant legal and cultural backlash. Critics and legal scholars argue that the change violates a 1964 federal statute, signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson, which explicitly designated the venue as the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The fallout has been swift: the American College Theatre Festival ended its 58-year partnership with the center, a prominent jazz musician canceled a 20-year Christmas Eve concert tradition, and Congresswoman Joyce Beatty filed a lawsuit seeking to declare the board’s renaming vote null and void, according to Deadline.
