the gay man trump put in charge of the kennedy center is accused of misplacing $5.6 million. the alleged text spells it "centre." be so for real.

Photo: Richard Grenell, official portrait as acting Director of National Intelligence. Office of the Director of National Intelligence, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

via The Daily Beast and The Advocate, both reporting on Axios's scoops

"Once the money comes to the company here, I will arrange the donation to Kennedy Centre [sic], and you'll be joining the VIP events and get close with the administration, even with POTUS."

That is a text message dated May 3, 2025, which Axios says it has reviewed, per the Advocate. The person accused of sending it is Ric Grenell, the openly gay Trump loyalist who ran the Kennedy Center from February 2025 to March 2026. Grenell denies sending it. Somebody, somewhere, also spelled "Centre" like a Bond villain, and we will be thinking about that all week.

what alina habba is alleging

This has been brewing since Oct. 14, when Axios reported that Alina Habba, Trump's former personal lawyer, had walked into the Oval Office and told the president that Grenell never deposited a Kennedy Center donation from her husband, a Turkish businessman. According to the Daily Beast's account of the Axios reporting, Habba says Grenell convinced him to fold the donation into a lump-sum $17.6 million payment for a business deal, with $5.6 million of it meant for the Kennedy Center. Her estimate of the donation has since moved from $17 million to roughly $6 million, the Advocate notes.

A search for the money late last year turned up nothing, staffers told Axios. The only record showed Habba's husband owed the center $270,000, which Axios reported he paid on Oct. 13. White House counsel Will Scharf is investigating at Trump's direction. "We're trying to find out whose money this is," a White House official told Axios.

what grenell says

"It's absurd. I've never asked for one cent to be sent somewhere else pretending it was for the Kennedy Center and I've never received any payment from him at all," Grenell told the Daily Beast by email. "Make him give proof to what he is saying, not make these absurd allegations." A senior administration official told Axios these are allegations only, and that the whole thing could be a "misunderstanding." Nothing here has been proven.

So what we have is two of Trump's most devoted people, each accusing the other of lying to the boss, over money for an arts center that Trump took over citing drag shows and that has since gone dark. We are not taking sides. We are just pulling up a chair.