President Donald Trump told reporters that his administration will release 80,000 pages of unredacted JFK assassination files, terming the trove ‘interesting’ but giving little hint of what if anything it may add.
‘We are tomorrow announcing and giving all of the Kennedy files… So people have been waiting for decades for this,’ Trump told reporters during a two-hour visit to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
‘That’s going to be released tomorrow. We have a tremendous amount of paper. You’ve got a lot of reading.
‘I don’t believe we are are going to redact anything. I said just don’t redact. You can’t redact. But we’re going to be releasing the JFK files,’ Trump said.
Trump spoke about releasing JFK files during his first campaign and term in office but thousands remained under seal. Then, he signed an executive order in January to declassify remaining files.
He said they would come out ‘tomorrow afternoon.’
Asked if he had reviewed the document or would provide an executive summary, Trump allowed: ‘I’ve heard about them. It’s going to be very interesting.’ He said about 80,000 pages of material would come out.
‘It’s a lot of stuff, and you’ll make your own determination,’ he said inside the Kennedy Center.
President Donald Trump told reporters the administration is releasing 80,000 JFK files on Tuesday
‘You got a lot of reading. I don’t believe we’re going to redact anything. I said, just don’t. But we’re going to be releasing the JFK files.’
‘They’ve been waiting for that for decades. And I said during the campaign I’d release them and I’m a man of my word so tomorrow you have the JFK files.
The substance of what might come out is unclear. But they could include files on a CIA spy chief with a murky role in the affair, it emerged last month.
The CIA man based in Miami funded a group of Cuban exiles, which assassin Lee Harvey Oswald tried to infiltrate weeks before he shot the president in Dallas on November 22, 1963.
Axios reported in February that the FBI had unearthed 2,400 new documents that could shed light on the enduring mystery of JFK’s death. According to Jefferson Morley, a leading expert on the assassination, the new documents could include files on George Joannides, who was chief of covert action at the CIA’s station in Miami in 1963.
Earlier Monday, Trump took a two hour tour of the Kennedy Center in D.C. and declared that he didn’t like the design of the building that commemorates JFK or the people who work there.
Flexing his new role after appointing himself chair of the cultural arts organization’s board, Trump organized a two-hour visit, where he made it known that he didn’t like the painted steel columns – or a glitzy new addition meant to bring in more outsiders provide artists with expanded practice spaces.
‘I never liked Hamilton very much,’ Trump said of the Broadway smash that cancelled its run amid the furor among artists after Trump organized a purge and stacked the board with political loyalists.
President Donald Trump leads a board meeting at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on March 17, 2025 in Washington, DC. After shunning the annual Kennedy Center Honors during his first term in the White House, Trump fired the center’s president, removed the bipartisan board of Biden appointees and named himself Chairman of the storied music, theater and dance institution. Seated with Trump are (L-R) Usha Vance, the wife of Vice President JD Vance, President of The Kennedy Center Board of Trustees Richard Grenell and Interim Vice Chair Jennifer Fischer
Trump attended the board meeting even as he prepares for a call with Russian President Vladimir Putin seeking a ceasefire for Russia’s war on Ukraine
Big head: Trump speaks to the media after attending a board meeting at the Kennedy Center
Trump points a finger as he returns to the White House after attending a board meeting at the Kennedy Center
‘I never liked it, but we are gonna have some really good shows. I would say this, come here and watch it, and you’ll see, over a period of time, it’ll improve very greatly physically. And we’re going to get some very good shows. The thing that does well are Broadway hits,’ he said.
They were Trump’s first comments on the Kennedy Center acknowledged to reporters on Air Force One that he had never been there, despite orchestrating the takeover and bashing its programming.
On Monday, he connected his gripes about the center to his broader MAGA effort to reshape the country.
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‘We’ll bring it back. We’ll make it great again. But it is so much like what I’m witnessing in other places. We have open borders, we have men playing in women’s sports. It’s all the same thing. It’s all the same mentality and thinking. So I’m very disappointed when I look around,’ Trump said.
Trump cast the building on the Potomac River as being in a state of disrepair. One thing he doesn’t fancy is the $250 million addition called the REACH. It has featured elegant parties, as well as outdoor beer and bratwurst picnics that are free and open to the public as a way to cater to people besides opera-loving elites.
(Trump fancies himself a bit of a music buff and broke convention by playing Pavarotti at campaign rallies).
‘They spent a fortune, $250 million and they built these rooms that nobody’s going to use, rooms underground. And I’ve often wondered, what are the big cubes that they have outside that block the view – the cubes with a door in them so that people can get down to rooms that nobody’s going to use. And it’s a shame. It’s a shame.
‘The other thing is, I have a little problem with some people that work here,’ Trump said.
He has installed former U.S. ambassador to Germany Ric Grenell to helm the group and put loyalists including Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Vice President JD Vance’s wife Usha Vance on the board.
The New York Times reported over the weekend that Trump wants to secure more sway over who is awarded the coveted Kennedy Center Honors. He has not attended the televised ceremonies in the past.