'People should go to prison': Trump ally calls for jailing Kennedy Center predecessors

Longtime Donald Trump ally Ric Grenell, a social media troll who has held many hats in the administration and recently stepped down from his role overseeing the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, told a crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, that the people who ran the venue before Trump took office should go to jail for ruining it.

Grenell proclaimed that the previous people in charge had left the Kennedy Center a "financial and structural mess."

According to The Daily Beast, "Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Texas on Friday, Grenell also backed the president’s controversial decision to shut the center down for two years, insisting that it would return "better than ever.'"

“I actually think people should go to prison for the deferred maintenance on the Kennedy Center,” said Grenell. “When you look at what they said that they were going to do, which was to fix the Kennedy Center, they were getting federal dollars to maintain the building. They were not maintaining the building. After 10 years of all of that, the place was literally falling apart.”

Since Trump took office, he has attempted to exert intense control over the Kennedy Center, with his handpicked board even putting his name on the facility.

Many observers have suspected the real motive for shutting down the venue for extended renovations is to shield it from the ongoing bad press of cratering ticket sales and artist cancelations that have spiked in response to Trump's efforts to put a MAGA stamp on it.

Litigation is underway, supported by Democratic Kennedy Center board member Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-OH), to stop the shutdown.