thanks, but no thanks

Another Kennedy Center Honoree Is Boycotting Trump’s Reception

Like Norman Lear, Carmen de Lavallade will take the award—but she’ll be skipping the part where honorees schmooze with Trump.
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by Earl Gibson III/WireImage.

Carmen de Lavallade, a legendary dancer who became one of the first African-American prima ballerinas to perform at New York’s hallowed Metropolitan Opera, is finally being awarded a Kennedy Center Honor. However, like fellow honoree Norman Lear, she’s decided to boycott the traditional White House reception that has long been a part of the celebration, thanks to Donald Trump and his divisive rhetoric.

“In light of the socially divisive and morally caustic narrative that our current leadership is choosing to engage in, and in keeping with the principles that I and so many others have fought for, I will be declining the invitation to attend the reception at the White House,” she said in a written statement to The Washington Post.

Lavallade’s decision arrives just days after Trump’s blundering remarks about the protests in Charlottesville, in which white supremacist and white nationalist groups descended on the Virginia town to protest the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue, wielding guns and tiki torches. The next day, a 32-year-old woman named Heather Heyer was killed after a man drove his car into a group of anti-racism protesters. In a shocking press conference following the tragedy, Trump defended the group full of neo-Nazis and white supremacists, saying there were “very fine people on both sides.” He later took to Twitter, his favorite medium for unfiltered thoughts, and bemoaned the removal of Confederate statues across the nation.

And that all happened in the last few days. Had Lavallade released her statement prior to the Charlottesville protests, she could have been referring to anything from Trump’s tweets about banning transgender soldiers from the military to his off-the-cuff remarks about attacking North Korea, setting off a wave of nuclear war-induced anxiety across the nation. However, it’s Trump’s remarks about Charlottesville that have marked a remarkably new low in the presidency, shocking even some of his most ardent supporters.

Lavallade and Norman Lear are currently the only two Kennedy Center Honorees this year who have announced plans to sit out the White House reception. Lear announced his decision in early August, stating that he will attend the event at the Kennedy Center, but will not go to the White House portion. The decision was unsurprising to fans of the TV icon, who spent the 2016 election insulting Trump in various interviews, announcing him “a thorough fool.”

Thus far, fellow KenCen honoree Gloria Estefan has said she will still go to the White House, in the hopes of discussing immigration issues with Trump. Meanwhile, L.L. Cool J and Lionel Richie are still tentatively attending the event, with the latter saying he’ll “play it by ear.”