Remarks During a Board of Trustees Meeting of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts

[The President's remarks were joined in progress.]

The President. It's dangerous, and it's dirty, and it's got graffiti, and it's got broken marble all over the place and roads that have—are desperately in need of new roads, which we're going to do, and medians that are falling down. You know, the median in between the roads is falling down, and metal—that metal crap that, as soon as you put it up, it seems to warp or something happens, because it can't be hit by that many cars and trucks. But I don't know if you ever noticed.

And I always said, whoever did that—because it's all over the country, for years—with the little curve—right, Laura?—you know what I'm talking about? The great Laura Ingraham. We've got a lot of power on this Board. [Laughter]

But this stuff is such garbage, and yet it's been selling for 30 years. I said, "Somebody has made a fortune." You get—they get every highway, and it's always bad, but here it's really bad because it's old and bad, and it looks terrible.

When we had the head of China coming in—the top people right underneath President Xi, and he'll be coming at—in the not-too-distant future. When we had India last week. We had France last week. And we had a lot of people. We had Ireland. We had U.K. And they come in, and I say, "How's it looking?" They say, "Oh, it's—looks much better." You know, that's great. But it looked very good when we had it, but I'd like it to look beyond that.

So we're going to spend a lot of effort, a lot of money on crime, and we're going to spend it on fixing up. We don't want graffities on the beautiful white statuary marble, and we want to have our roads good and everything else. We'll be able to do that easily.

And this is a part of it. I mean, Kennedy Center is a very big part of it. And you can't have this looking like it does.

I'm so surprised because, you know, I know the person who was in charge of it, and he's a good man. I never realized this was in such bad shape. I've been so busy, I haven't been able to be here in a long time. And I shouldn't be, with what I'm doing. But I thought it was important, because I've been hearing reports, and I thought it was very important to make this good.

It's a very big part of the fabric of Washington, DC, and we're going to make our capital great again, just like we're going to make our country great again.

April 2 is liberation day for our country, because we're going to finally be taking in money. We're already doing it—a lot of money. As you know, we put down some early tariffs on people and countries that were not treating us well. And that's both friend and foe, you know?

[At this point, reporters exited, and the meeting continued; no transcript was provided.]