Whoopi Goldberg Says She Won't Go Back to the Kennedy Center, Reason Why Explained

The Kennedy Center will no longer have Whoopi Goldberg as a ptron.

The 69-year-old actress and co-host of The View confirmed on the show on Thursday (March 6) that she no longer will attend Kennedy Center performances following President Donald Trump taking over the board, resulting in changes at the venue including firings and show cancellations.

During the “Hot Topics” segment, she and the rest of the panel were discussing the announcement on Wednesday (March 5) by Hamilton producers Jeffrey Seller and Lin-Manuel Miranda that they have ditched a planned 2026 Kennedy Center engagement of the musical in response to the “recent purge by the Trump administration of both professional staff and performing arts events at or originally produced by the Kennedy Center.”

Richard Grenell, the Trump-appointed interim executive director of the Kennedy Center, posted a response, calling it “a publicity stunt.”

“The American people need to know that @Lin_Manuel is intolerant of people who don’t agree with him politically. It’s clear he and Sellers [sic] don’t want Republicans going to their shows. Americans see you, Lin. Let’s be clear on the facts. Seller and @Lin_Manuel first went to the New York Times before they came to the Kennedy Center with their announcement that they can’t be in the same room with Republicans. This is a publicity stunt that will backfire. The Arts are for everyone – not just for the people who Lin likes and agrees with,” he wrote.

Sunny Hostin noted “If you fire everyone [on the board] that was there, and it was a bipartisan group, and replace them with sycophants that are just going to toe the Trump line, is that really the mission of the Kennedy Center?”

Whoopi said Trump’s firing of the Center’s previous bipartisan board “was a big smack to the arts, which don’t have a politics.”

She went on to suggest that Hamilton makes it statements with its nontraditional casting: “Hamilton doesn’t look like Hamilton,” she said.

“I have no plans to go back to the Kennedy Center until the Kennedy Center becomes what it was supposed to be – a welcome place for all artists no matter what your groove is.”

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