MS NOW⁠95%

Crews remove Trump’s name from Kennedy Center, but hide results from the public ⁠50%

By Steve Benen⁠95%

6/15/2026, 5:48:33 AM

BS Summary: This article contains 28 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Ambiguity (Equivocation), and Availability Heuristic, with Biased Writer Voice as the most egregious example at 69.1% saturation with 349 hits. Analysis detected 1,791 faulty-reasoning hits from 505 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 50.3% and a BS Rank of ⁠50% (10,941 of 21,887 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 50.00% of the article peer group.

Five months after Donald Trump and his allies tried to force his name onto the John F. 
Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, a federal judge made the obvious call: The law says only Congress can change the name of the memorial, and that didn’t happen. 
Late last week, the administration made several last-ditch efforts to halt implementation of the ruling before the court-imposed deadline, but to no avail. 
MS NOW reported: 
The John F. 
Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts has been restored to its original name. 
President Donald Trump’s name was officially cleared from the marble façade of the storied cultural institution on Saturday, the Kennedy Center said, after last-minute attempts by the Trump administration to delay a federal judge’s ruling that the name cannot be changed. 
There’s still some legal wrangling on the horizon, but at this point, it’s worth pausing to note how exactly the Kennedy Center was restored to its legal name. 
On Friday, a crowd assembled to watch crews remove Trump’s name from the wall, and while I wasn’t personally there, by all accounts, the audience was prepared to celebrate a good show. 
The Washington Post reported, “The atmosphere was festival-like: People brought their dogs, their partners and their children.” 
But it quickly became clear that spectators were going to be disappointed. 
Crew members spent hours erecting scaffolding for reasons that weren’t altogether clear, at least not at first. 
It would have been easy enough to simply put someone in a boom lift, elevate them to the offending letters and have them remove the incumbent president’s name. 
But it soon became clear why the scaffolding was put in place. 
The Wall Street Journal reported, “Between 1 and 2 a.m., the workers began to fasten large, white tarps to the scaffolding, obscuring the crowd’s view and drawing boos from some on the ground.” 
To be sure, Trump’s name appears to be gone from the wall. 
In fact, some photojournalists managed to capture some images from behind the tarps, which showed a worker removing letters. 
But as of late Sunday, the public still wasn’t allowed to see the work that had been done. 
The removal of Trump’s name was poised to be a symbolically significant event. 
The authoritarian-minded leader, fixated on self-glorification, tried to force his name onto a memorial for a celebrated assassinated president, a court instead upheld the law, and a crowd assembled to watch the crew precisely because of the indelible images that would soon emerge. 
But Trump’s team, no doubt mindful of the circumstances, preferred a literal cover-up. 
It’s something to keep in mind the next time White House officials boast about the president and his administration enthusiastically embracing “transparency.” 
As for the future of the Kennedy Center, the president’s appointees at the venue announced over the weekend that they had established the Trump Kennedy Center Fund, which will purportedly help raise money for the center. 
Trump, the appointees added, will be the chairman. 
Article reasoning-pattern comparisonThis article: 14.5%Steve Benen: 10.5%MS NOW: 7.5%Confirmation Bias14.5%This article: 0.0%Steve Benen: 1.6%MS NOW: 1.2%Anchoring Bias0.0%This article: 22.6%Steve Benen: 3.7%MS NOW: 3.7%Availability Heuristic22.6%This article: 5.5%Steve Benen: 0.9%MS NOW: 1.1%Representativeness Heuristic5.5%This article: 2.4%Steve Benen: 1.9%MS NOW: 1.3%Hindsight Bias2.4%This article: 0.0%Steve Benen: 3.1%MS NOW: 2.6%Overconfidence Bias0.0%This article: 15.0%Steve Benen: 23.0%MS NOW: 15.4%Framing Effect15.0%This article: 0.0%Steve Benen: 0.4%MS NOW: 0.7%Loss Aversion0.0%This article: 0.0%Steve Benen: 0.8%MS NOW: 0.9%Status Quo Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Steve Benen: 0.1%MS NOW: 0.1%Sunk Cost Effect0.0%This article: 0.0%Steve Benen: 1.3%MS NOW: 2.4%Optimism Bias0.0%This article: 8.9%Steve Benen: 3.1%MS NOW: 3.2%Pessimism Bias8.9%This article: 32.3%Steve Benen: 29.0%MS NOW: 19.2%Negativity Bias32.3%This article: 0.0%Steve Benen: 2.1%MS NOW: 2.4%Self-Serving Bias0.0%This article: 2.6%Steve Benen: 4.7%MS NOW: 3.1%Fundamental Attribution Error2.6%This article: 0.0%Steve Benen: 0.3%MS NOW: 0.3%Actor-Observer Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Steve Benen: 3.4%MS NOW: 3.5%In-Group Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Steve Benen: 3.2%MS NOW: 2.5%Out-Group Homogeneity Bias0.0%This article: 8.1%Steve Benen: 0.9%MS NOW: 2.2%Halo Effect8.1%This article: 0.0%Steve Benen: 4.4%MS NOW: 1.8%Horn Effect0.0%This article: 0.0%Steve Benen: 0.1%MS NOW: 0.0%Dunning-Kruger Effect0.0%This article: 10.5%Steve Benen: 2.9%MS NOW: 1.8%Recency Bias10.5%This article: 3.4%Steve Benen: 0.8%MS NOW: 0.6%Primacy Effect3.4%This article: 0.0%Steve Benen: 0.2%MS NOW: 0.2%Blind-Spot Bias0.0%This article: 11.1%Steve Benen: 7.8%MS NOW: 4.7%Ad Hominem11.1%This article: 0.0%Steve Benen: 1.6%MS NOW: 1.3%Straw Man0.0%This article: 12.9%Steve Benen: 6.3%MS NOW: 5.4%Appeal to Authority12.9%This article: 5.5%Steve Benen: 1.6%MS NOW: 2.2%False Dilemma5.5%This article: 0.0%Steve Benen: 1.7%MS NOW: 2.2%Slippery Slope0.0%This article: 0.0%Steve Benen: 0.2%MS NOW: 0.2%Circular Reasoning0.0%This article: 5.7%Steve Benen: 8.9%MS NOW: 8.1%Hasty Generalization5.7%This article: 0.0%Steve Benen: 0.7%MS NOW: 0.7%Red Herring0.0%This article: 0.0%Steve Benen: 1.2%MS NOW: 0.9%Bandwagon0.0%This article: 4.4%Steve Benen: 11.3%MS NOW: 9.8%Appeal to Emotion4.4%This article: 10.7%Steve Benen: 3.5%MS NOW: 2.4%Begging the Question10.7%This article: 16.6%Steve Benen: 3.3%MS NOW: 3.2%Post Hoc (False Cause)16.6%This article: 4.4%Steve Benen: 0.8%MS NOW: 0.6%Tu Quoque4.4%This article: 3.6%Steve Benen: 1.4%MS NOW: 0.9%Burden of Proof3.6%This article: 0.0%Steve Benen: 0.0%MS NOW: 0.1%Appeal to Nature0.0%This article: 0.0%Steve Benen: 0.2%MS NOW: 0.3%Composition/Division0.0%This article: 20.0%Steve Benen: 2.0%MS NOW: 2.6%Anecdotal20.0%This article: 0.0%Steve Benen: 0.1%MS NOW: 0.2%No True Scotsman0.0%This article: 26.1%Steve Benen: 1.9%MS NOW: 1.7%Ambiguity (Equivocation)26.1%This article: 0.0%Steve Benen: 0.0%MS NOW: 0.0%Gambler’s Fallacy0.0%This article: 0.0%Steve Benen: 0.1%MS NOW: 0.1%Middle Ground0.0%This article: 0.0%Steve Benen: 0.5%MS NOW: 0.3%Personal Incredulity0.0%This article: 4.6%Steve Benen: 0.2%MS NOW: 0.3%Special Pleading4.6%This article: 0.0%Steve Benen: 2.2%MS NOW: 1.3%Genetic Fallacy0.0%This article: 18.8%Steve Benen: 3.8%MS NOW: 2.5%Unattributed Quote18.8%This article: 4.0%Steve Benen: 2.6%MS NOW: 1.5%Quote-first Misdirection4.0%This article: 69.1%Steve Benen: 22.9%MS NOW: 14.2%Biased Writer Voice69.1%This article: 4.4%Steve Benen: 1.4%MS NOW: 2.1%Indoctrination4.4%This article: 0.0%Steve Benen: 8.6%MS NOW: 5.3%Politically Left Leaning Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%Steve Benen: 0.6%MS NOW: 0.6%Politically Right Leaning Bias0.0%This article: 7.1%Steve Benen: 0.2%MS NOW: 0.4%Attempt to Sell a Product or S…7.1%

505 words analyzed.

Speakers

4speakers21%attributed speech398writer words
Voice mapSelect a segment to jump to its words
Writer's voice • 13 words • 100.0% coverageWriter's voice • 17 words • 100.0% coverageWriter's voice • 29 words • 100.0% coverageWriter's voice • 23 words • 100.0% coverageMS NOW • 3 words • 100.0% coverageWriter's voice • 3 words • 0.0% coverageMS NOW • 13 words • 0.0% coverageKennedy Center • 41 words • 100.0% coverageWriter's voice • 28 words • 100.0% coverageWriter's voice • 32 words • 100.0% coverageThe Washington Post • 17 words • 100.0% coverageWriter's voice • 12 words • 100.0% coverageWriter's voice • 17 words • 100.0% coverageWriter's voice • 28 words • 100.0% coverageWriter's voice • 12 words • 0.0% coverageThe Wall Street Journal • 33 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 12 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 19 words • 100.0% coverageWriter's voice • 18 words • 100.0% coverageWriter's voice • 13 words • 100.0% coverageWriter's voice • 43 words • 100.0% coverageWriter's voice • 13 words • 100.0% coverageWriter's voice • 22 words • 100.0% coverageWriter's voice • 36 words • 100.0% coverageWriter's voice • 8 words • 100.0% coverage
Selected voice

Kennedy Center

100%flagged-word coverage
41 attributed words38% of attributed speech99% writer coverage
0%50.0%100.0%Biased Writer Voice+22.6 ptsWriter: 77.4%Kennedy Center: 100.0%100.0%Unattributed Quote-23.9 ptsWriter: 23.9%Kennedy Center: 0.0%0.0%Attempt to Sell a Product -9.0 ptsWriter: 9.0%Kennedy Center: 0.0%0.0%Indoctrination-5.5 ptsWriter: 5.5%Kennedy Center: 0.0%0.0%

Attribution is sentence-level. Pattern percentages are calculated only from words assigned to that voice.

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Analysis

Hover over highlighted words in the article to view the associated bias or fallacy analysis.