Following an evening that saw President Trump booed and cheered at the Kennedy Center, Richard Grenell is taking to X to respond to the criticism.

Grenell, the interim president of the Kennedy Center responded to the reports of Trump’s boos noting that CNN’s May 7 story regarding actors boycotting the June 11 performance was fake. He said, “Weeks ago, CNN had multiple anonymous sources who said the cast of Les Mis would absolutely boycott the opening at the Kennedy Center and shut down the show. Most every news outlet in the U.S. simply repeated the same anonymously sourced item. No outlet did original reporting. It was repeat and retweet. The story was fake news. I knew it at the time but wanted to wait to prove it to the world. Do you think CNN will apologize, correct the record or learn from their mistakes? Nope. They aren’t interested accuracy – they are about attention and clicks. It’s sick and manipulative and immoral.” 

He then went to call on People Magazine to apologize for reporting the story and called on the Daily Beast to correct the “fake news story” and said the news outlet had “plagiarized the story and got caught.” He also called out the Huffington Post and Newsweek, and also called them plagiarizers.

All four news outlets cited CNN as their source for the story.  

Grenell, however, did not give any information regarding what cast performed on June 11 when Trump was in attendance.

The evening saw Trump, alongside first lady Melania Trump, walk a red carpet and was asked about cast members boycotting. He said, “I couldn’t care less!” Honestly, I couldn’t. All I do is run the country well.”

Once inside the opera house Trump was greeted with a mix of boos and cheers and audience members screaming “Convicted felon, rapist!” There were also four drag queens, who attended in protest to Trump’s “No drag show” mandate, and received a huge ovation. According to CNN, one of the drag queens said that there attendance was ““a message of inclusivity. I really love musicals, I mean I’m a drag queen.”

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