Vice President JD Vance Loudly Booed While Attending Kennedy Center Concert

Vice President JD Vance was greeted with a loud round of boos when attendees spotted him at a performance of Stavinsky’s Petrushka at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. on Thursday night (March 13). Video of the incident appeared to show other attendees expressing their displeasure with the veep as he took a seat in a box next to wife Usha Vance and sipped on a beverage before the start of the performance.

Seemingly not reacting to the nearly 30 seconds of boo birds, Vance was seen waving and smiling during the VP’s first appearance at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts since Donald Trump appointed himself chairman of the Kennedy Center and controversially filled its board with MAGA loyalist last month.

According to the New York Times, the concert started nearly 20 minutes late because of added security measures related to the VP’s attendance. The Trump takeover of the Kennedy Center leadership featured a purge of the previously bipartisan board, with appointments that included other Trump loyalists appointed to the board, including his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, Fox News host Laura Ingraham and attorney general Pam Bondi.

After the Trump purge of the board at the Center, the backlash from performers and former supporters was swift. Among those resigning from the Center were Ben Folds, soprano Renée Fleming and producer Shonda Rhimes, with actress Issa Rae, singers Rhiannon Giddens and Peter Wolf and a production of Hamilton all calling off previously scheduled performances in protest.

J. Geils Band singer Wolf said he’d decided to pull his planned March 21 stop at the Center due to the “egregious firing of staff by the new administration,” while Gidden explained her decision by saying, “I cannot in good conscience play at The Kennedy Center with the change in programming direction forced on the institution by this new board.”

In addition, the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington cancelled a planned Pride Month performance and Philly band Low Cut Connie canceled a booked February show.

Posting about the board putsch on his social media feed last month, Trump promised that the new bookings at the Center would be free of “ANTI-AMERICAN PROPAGANDA.” In his first term as president, Trump broke with precedent by not attending the annual Kennedy Center Honors, something all previous presidents had done since the honors program began in 1978, with the exception of a few cases when they were called away by urgent events.

At the time of the board re-shuffle, Trump — who has never attended a show at the Kennedy Center in either one of his terms to date — added, “Just last year, the Kennedy Center featured Drag Shows specifically targeting our youth — THIS WILL STOP. The Kennedy Center is an American Jewel, and must reflect the brightest STARS on its stage from all across our Nation. For the Kennedy Center, THE BEST IS YET TO COME!”

In addition to the board shake-up, like many parts of the government, the Center scrubbed its site of any references to diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. To date, nearly two dozen performances have been cancelled or postponed

Thursday’s boos were not the first time this week that Vance has faced a hostile audience. While visiting his Cincinnati home last weekend, the Ohio-bred VP was greeted with protesters outside his $1.4 million East Walnut Hills home, where a group of pro-Ukrainian demonstrators waved signs reading “JD Vance: Ukraine’s kids aer way more scared than yours” and “JD Vance: Have you no shame?” in the wake of a tense Oval Office meeting last month with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in which Vance berated the wartime Ukrainian leader for what he perceived as a lack of gratitude for U.S. support in the unprovoked war against his country launched by Russia in 2022.