The Kennedy Center has fired an employee after the man published a 35-minute-long anti-Trump rant where he was completely naked.
The former employee, 32-year-old Tavish Forsyth, worked with children in a division of the Washington National Opera’s Opera Institute at the Kennedy Center, and is currently a faculty member at Johns Hopkins University.
Forsyth, who identifies as “queer” and lists his pronouns as “they/them,” posted a 35-minute-long unhinged spoken word poetry video attacking President Donald Trump and expressing anger over the president’s recent changes to the Kennedy Center, especially the ban on drag shows.
The video begins with Forsyth sitting on his bed in full clothing, before snapping his fingers and jump cutting to him sitting in the same position completely nude, with only a rainbow heart emoji covering his private area.
“F—k Donald Trump and the Kennedy Center,” Forsyth said at one point in the lengthy video, before going on to falsely claim that the Trump administration “is systematically targeting the livelihood and liberty of poor people, queer people, black and brown people, people of color, immigrants, Muslims, victims in war-torn countries, victims of ethnic cleansing, women.”
“Now that I’ve said all this, people will name me radical. Crazy. Antifa. Terrorist. Pot-smoking hippie. Whatever the f—k,” he added. “To which I say: f—k it.”
“Oppression is the mask of fear. I will not hide behind the mask,” Forsyth continued.
The Kennedy Center has fired a contractor named Tavish Forsyth, after he posted an anti-Trump video of himself completely naked, with an animated heart barely covering his nether-regions.
Forsyth reportedly worked in a program that involved children, so the decision to let him… pic.twitter.com/EgDOYIZ0hp
— Sarah Fields (@SarahisCensored) March 21, 2025
Kennedy Center vice president of public relations Roma Daravi slammed Forsyth’s video as “extremely disturbing” and argued that it “does not represent the values of the Kennedy Center.”
“Most concerning of all, his contracted position was specifically to work with minors,” Daravi told the New York Post. “Who knows what kind of radical ideology they have been pushing on the youth? Not anymore. They’re fired.”
Meanwhile, Forsyth explained in a statement to the Los Angeles Times that his job at the Kennedy Center “is one of the best jobs I’ve ever had.”
“Specifically with my team, the Opera Institute, there was just so much love and support, and a sincere commitment to reimagine the ways that we create art, and also to take a really critical look at some of the more problematic ways that we’ve created art in the past,” he claimed, adding: “Any implication that I am corrupting the youth is laughably false, intentionally misleading, and is underscored by decades of hate targeted at LGBTQ+ educators.”
This behavior will not be knowingly funded by the Kennedy Center.
Today, they/him were fired. https://t.co/jEK45Cz2Xb
— Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) March 21, 2025
