After dominating U.S. politics for nearly a decade, President Trump now appears to be setting his sights on the country’s cultural landscape.

A Friday announcement that Trump is naming himself chair of the Kennedy Center’s board is a step toward giving his administration a much bigger role in and influence over the world of arts and entertainment overseen by the federal government. Political experts say the unprecedented move by a commander in chief could be just the beginning.

“It's like an assault on every kind of norm that has existed in American social and political and cultural life that he's engaging in,” said Mark Wheeler, a political communications professor at London Metropolitan University in England.

The surprise Kennedy Center news from Trump, Wheeler said, is one that both plays to his GOP base and is part of a “shock and awe” strategy he’s pursuing in “many different kinds of fronts in terms of public policy but also the cultural precepts.”

“It’s the kind of disruptor process that Trump is engaged in, in terms of the kind of celebrity and political outsider image that he's constructed or has been constructed for him,” said Wheeler, the author of “Hollywood: Politics and Society.”

Trump, who on Sunday became the first sitting president to attend the Super Bowl, has made it clear that he wants to prevent the Kennedy Center from putting on cultural works with which he disagrees, criticizing “drag shows” in a Truth Social post and raising questions over how much politics might influence Washington's leading performing arts center, which opened in 1971.

“Since bursting onto the political stage in 2015, President Trump has made culture the dominant issue in American politics and society — with some unwitting support from the Democratic left,” former Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-Fla.) said. “Appointing himself to this position will allow him to continue casting himself as a cultural warrior undoing the excesses of the left and restoring what he would call traditional American culture.”

Trump and the GOP on the campaign trail in 2024 successfully leaned into issues such as drag shows and........

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