Joke’s on them! Months before the Kennedy Center was officially renamed for Trump, a political satire writer quietly snapped up internet domain names tied to the controversial rebrand, effectively beating the administration to the digital punch.
As previously reported, the Kennedy Center’s board of trustees voted on Dec. 18 to rename the institution the Donald J. Trump and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts, a move that quickly drew national attention.
Following the announcement, it was revealed that comedy writer Toby Morton had already purchased domain names tied to the new name of the center.
Morton, who has worked on Mad TV and South Park, told The Washington Post that he bought trumpkennedycenter.org and trumpkennedycenter.com in August, anticipating the renaming. Morton confirmed the purchases in an email to USA Today on Dec. 21.
Domains Currently Parked, Not Live
Morton said the domains are not yet active and are currently parked through GoDaddy. As a result, the URLs display automatically generated placeholder content.
“Both domains are currently parked through GoDaddy,” Morton told USA Today. He said the pages are “automatically generated by their parking service, which injects random syndicated content until a site is live.”
Morton added that the content currently appearing on the sites was not created or approved by him and will be removed once the domains are connected to active hosting.
Morton said the reaction to the news of the domain purchases has been largely positive.
“I’ve received a large number of messages from creatives, writers, designers, and performers offering to contribute and help elevate what comes next,” Morton said.
Morton said the parody website will focus on Trump’s branding and the broader cultural implications of attaching a political figure’s name to a civic institution.
“That enthusiasm is shaping the direction of the upcoming site, which will focus squarely on Trump’s narcissism, branding impulses, and the broader cultural implications of attaching his name to institutions that were meant to be civic, not personal,” Morton said.
Morton has a history of creating parody websites that resemble official pages while satirizing public figures and institutions, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, televangelist Joel Osteen, and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
Morton describes himself on Instagram as the “creator of anti-fascist websites.” Speaking to The Washington Post, he said the Trump-Kennedy Center parody would reflect what he described as “the absurdity of the moment.”
“Some things are truly hard to parody,” Morton said.
As of late December, the Kennedy Center’s official website remains kennedy-center.org, according to USA Today. Trump’s name has been added prominently to the site’s branding, but it remains unclear whether the institution plans to change its official domain.
No Timeline Announced For Launch
Following reports about the domain purchases, Morton posted on Instagram that additional supporters had expressed interest in contributing to the parody project.
Morton has not announced when the parody websites will go live, and no timeline has been provided for the launch of the project.
