Paintings and sculptures glorified the inaugural of a Philistine

What’s wrong with this picture? The National Gallery of Art, the D.C. museum open to the public free of charge, hosted a Trump inaugural event requiring an entry fee of $1 million.

I rush to say that the fee went to the inaugural committee rather than to the museum, but the optics – the elephantine cost of entry to an otherwise no-cost venue is jarring.

But it’s downright unseemly for Trump to celebrate his victory at an art museum given his disdain for the arts. During his first term, he proposed eliminating the National Endowment for the Arts. And now, Project 2025 also proposes this.

Trump argued at the time of his first election that owing to the financial pressures facing the country it can’t afford federal money going to the arts.

(Never mind the tax breaks going to the wealthiest among us - as if that doesn’t strain the nation’s budget).

He also contended that it wasn’t up to the government to decide what art was worthy of support.

(Never mind that Trump’s government doesn’t hesitate deciding women’s reproductive rights).

With Trump’s antipathy to the arts, using the National Gallery for an inaugural event comes off like a joke Not that this was the first time he unwittingly made the same joke.

, In his second victory, like his first, his inaugural luncheons took place in the National Statuary Hall in the Capitol Rotunda. And these sites are virtual museums, too.

Aside from the three dozen larger-than-life sculptures of historic figures, this year’s inaugural speech occurred in the Capitol Rotunda, where giant paintings picturing American history grace the walls.

So, there was Trump surrounded by art that gloried him while he seeks to destroy NEA to save taxpayer dollars -- $10 trillion according to The Hill Report.

But here’s the thing. the percentage of the federal budget that goes to the NEA each year comes to 0.003 percent. So the question goes pleading, why eliminate is an agency in the name of cutting the deficit if the cut doesn’t make a nick, let alone a dent?

Maybe the better question to ask is does Trump knows what the NEA does. Looking at what he has said in the past about it, he doesn’t know anything at all.

Consider his take on Brooklyn Museum’s controversial show in 1999 of Chris Ofili’s painting “The Holy Virgin Mary” decorated with elephant waste. Trump attacked the NEA for the exhibit, even though the Endowment had nothing to do with it.

The Daily News quoted Trump at the time, saying, “As President, I would ensure that the National Endowment of the Arts stops funding of this sort.”

It looks like one of the ways Trump will make America great again will be to stop support of the arts. Yet even a casual glance at history would tell him that when it comes to greatness, it’s not the amount of money a government saves, but rather the art that it supports.

The Medici family, rulers of Italy for three centuries, made their fortune in banking; but they made the history books by patronizing the arts, beginning with financial aid to Michelangelo. Sadly for the country, the lessons of history are lost on Trump.