Donald Trump takes on America’s elite

In between

trying to end the war in Ukraine,

picking fights with judges and refashioning the federal government, US President Donald Trump dropped into the John F. Kennedy Centre for the Performing Arts in Washington last week – his first visit since installing himself as its new chairman.

Mr Trump has promised to rid one of the US’ leading arts venues of “woke” influences, “drag shows” and “other anti-American propaganda”, and usher in a “golden age in arts and culture”. “We have to straighten it out,” he told reporters on Air Force One. That mission is part of a multipronged assault on some of America’s elite institutions, an offensive whose scale and intensity have stunned the country’s liberal establishment.