When Karma Comes Calling
The Price of Self-Aggrandizement

ELIZABETH GEORGE
May 31, 2026

Of all the nasty alterations that Donald Trump has made and is still making in Washington D.C., the one that offended me the most was the renaming of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Arts. The inclusion of Donald Trump’s name on a building created by an act of Congress to honor not only a slain President but also a military hero was an insult to President Kennedy’s living daughter, to his grandchildren, to those members of his family whose lives have been dedicated to public service, and to Americans who well remember not only his brief Presidency but also how he came to define a hopeful future in which even the impossible—putting a man on the moon by the end of the decade—not only seemed possible but also became a remarkable achievement. So when Trump was ordered by Federal Judge Christopher Cooper to remove his name from all signage and all official materials related to the Kennedy Center, my immediate reaction was “Thank God.” Of course, the judge’s decision will be appealed. Indeed, Trump’s name may remain on the building until a future President and a future Congress remove his name from everything it currently graces. But for a moment, it seemed as if Trump’s wildly overdue karma might finally be knocking on his chamber door.

Donald Trump is not worthy of any honor, any tribute, or any distinction, and my guess is that nothing will mark his Presidency other than the destruction wrought upon the White House and the grounds surrounding it, his war crimes associated with an illegal war, his ignorant tariffs that have wreaked monetary havoc in the lives of ordinary people, and a staggering national debt.

I remember John F. Kennedy quite well. I can close my eyes and see him—on our black and white television—coming into a hotel hallway to speak to reporters right after he won the Democratic nomination in 1960. I can remember watching his inauguration with my class at St. Joseph’s Grammar School in Mountain View, California, on a portable television with rabbit ears. I recall Robert Frost unable to read his Presidential poem because of the glare on the paper upon which it was written and, instead, reciting another one. I remember President Kennedy’s inaugural address.

What I didn’t know at the time was the nature of Kennedy’s wartime heroism. I knew the term that was used for it—“PT-109”—and I knew it involved a boat because there were photographs available that showed him sitting in what I assume was its cockpit (with apologies as I know nothing about boats other than it’s wise to wear a life jacket while in one). But I didn’t know that these boats were naval torpedo boats, they were quite old at the time, they were made of wood, and they were tasked with patroling at night in order to intercept Japanese supply ships in the area of Blackett Strait in the Solomon Islands. On August 2, 1943, PT-109—under the command of Lieutenant (JG) Kennedy was rammed by a Japanese destroyer, cutting it in half, igniting its fuel tank, and immediately killing two of the men onboard. Eleven members of the crew clung to the remains of the boat until she sank. The crew then faced the fact that they would have to swim to a small island several miles away.

One of the men had been seriously burned in the explosion and rendered incapable of swimming. Lieutenant Kennedy ordered him to lie upon his (Kennedy’s) back and he then swam the distance to the island with the strap of the man’s life jacket held between his teeth. The swim took five hours. The island they reached was tiny and uninhabited. Leaving his companions there, Kennedy swam back out into the passage in the hope he would be able to flag down a friendly ship. There were none.

In the succeeding days, Kennedy and his crew relocated to another island in the hope of finding food. He and another crew member swam for help again and again. Ultimately, they were found by islanders who were scouting for the Allies. It was for the scouts that Kennedy scratched out his famous coconut-shell message: NAURO ISL…COMMANDER…NATIVE KNOWS POS’IT…HE CAN PILOT…11 ALIVE…NEED SMALL BOAT…KENNEDY. The islanders took the coconut message to the Americans. The coconut itself went home with Kennedy after the war and was displayed on his desk when he became President.

He was President only from January 1961 until November 1963, yet in that time he:
Managed the Cuban Missile Crisis

Negotiated the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with the then USSR
Created the Peace Corps

Accelerated funding and support for NASA, sending the first astronauts into space

Sent Federal Troops and Marshalls to enforce the court-ordered desegregation of the South, particularly at University of Mississippi and University of Alabama

Proposed major civil rights legislation that became the basis for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 after his murder

Delivered a nationally televised speech declaring civil rights a moral issue

Oversaw a period of econmic expansion with declining unemployment and strong growth
Expanded federal support for trade through the Trade Expansion Act

Established the Alliance for Progress to encourage economic and social development in Latin America

Strengthened support for scientific research and higher education

It seems to me that, considering the brief time he was President, he left quite a proud legacy.

Examining the Presidency of Donald Trump, we can see the following:

Trump’s terrible bone spurs kept him out of the military, so we can make no comparison between him and John F. Kennedy as he was never able to serve with distinction in a war zone, nor was he able to engage in heroic acts to save his comrades. However, his achievements as President have been many:

Lowering the taxes of of most households through lower income taxes, a larger standard deduction, and an expanded child tax credit, all expiring after 2025 unless acted upon by Congress

Permanent tax cuts on corporations, reducing their taxes from 35% to 21%

The building of 458 miles of his promised paid-for-by-Mexico border wall along the 1,954 miles of border with Mexico at a cost to the US taxpayers of $15 - $16 billion

Encouraging the invasion of the Capitol Building by rioting supporters on January 6, 2021

Increasing funding and responsibility of ICE including the use of unregulated detention facilities, workplace raids, and home arrests.

Opening detention facilities to be operated by for-profit corporations

Opening federally protected lands for drilling by oil companies

Placing three conservative justices on the Supreme Court along with hundreds of other conservative federal judges.

Pardoning all those convicted of January 6th crimes at the Capitol Building

Beginning an unauthorized war with a foreign country

Indiscriminately killing civilians during that war

Renaming the Kennedy Center for the Arts and replacing its board with himself as head

Partially resurfacing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool with blue paint at a cost of $13.1 million of taxpayers’ money.

Tearing down a federal building without authorization (East Wing of the White House)
Building a stadium in front of the White House without authorization

I believe we can agree that Donald Trump’s achievements have been many and varied, but the question we must ask is whether these achievements were for the benefit of his fellow Americans.

Some people will see them as such. Others will prefer to examine the ways in which he seems to have increased his financial worth at the cost of the well-being of ordinary people.

I prefer to see that the walls are finally closing in on Donald Trump, and that he is daily experiencing the karma that has been on its way from the moment he first cheated a contractor or created his first con. I used to hope for an entirely different kind of karma to befall the man, but every day I’m learning that the karma he’s experiencing might be far better than what I’d hoped it would be.

Just, please God, get his name off the John F. Kennedy Center for the Arts. The building doesn’t have to be drenched in gold paint, it doesn’t have to be “redecorated” in a style approved by a man whose vulgarity apparently has no limits. It just has to be what it was meant to be: a place for performances by artists, a place to honor achievements by those artists, and a tribute to a President whose shoe soles Trump is not worthy of licking.
 

© 2026 Elizabeth George
548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104