Media personality Geraldo Rivera publicly appealed to President Donald Trump on Friday, urging him in stark terms to abandon his threatened demolition of the Kennedy Center. Rivera, who has been a close friend of Trump for nearly 50 years, warned the president that carrying out the threat would not bring him the "honor" he hopes for — and suggested the outcome would be quite the opposite.

"Dear President Trump," Rivera wrote in a post on X, "As someone who has often supported you, including during the Russia, Russia, hoax, I ask that you forgo your announced intention to demolish the Kennedy Center if it is not named in your honor. There no honor in that, only spite."

The plea arrives amid a sharp escalation in Trump's quest to place his name on the Kennedy Center building. Much of the legal friction traces back to the venue's special standing: Congress designated it a living memorial to President John F. Kennedy after his assassination, a status that has repeatedly placed the renaming dispute before federal judges. Trump has prioritized the project above nearly all else during his second term, dating back to December, when his hand-picked board voted unanimously to add his name to the facade. The name was initially mounted on the building, but a federal judge ruled against the change in May, and the name was removed in June. Since then, repeated attempts to restore it under a variety of pretexts have been slapped down by the court each time.

Those setbacks prompted Trump to muse publicly about demolishing the building, while the board claimed the center would have to declare bankruptcy unless the president's name was added. On Tuesday, a federal judge blocked the renaming of the building once and for all, as well as the board's plan to rename the surrounding campus the "President Donald J. Trump Plaza."

The judge spoke in no uncertain terms: "Simply put, defendants cannot install memorials for President Trump or anyone or anything else at the Kennedy Center without Congress' blessing."

Events moved quickly after the decision. Almost immediately, the board announced that the center would close. A reporter then photographed Trump alongside what appeared to be a sign announcing the center's demolition, prompting a judge to order that the administration must give 30 days' notice before any demolition so a court can examine its legality. That notice requirement now serves as the next checkpoint in the standoff, with any demolition plan set to face judicial scrutiny before work could begin. Some observers have warned that Trump may send in the bulldozers despite that order — a step they caution could ignite a full-blown constitutional crisis.

Lawyers for Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-OH), a Kennedy Center trustee who has sued to keep Trump's name off the building, condemned the effort in pointed language: "This constant effort to add Donald Trump's name to the Kennedy Center facade is the definition of insanity. This is now the third attempt to deface this sacred memorial and turn it into a vanity project for one man's ego. Worse still, now Trump is taking the Center hostage and threatening to in effect kill it unless he gets his way. This has to stop."

Mary Trump, a psychologist and the president's niece, offered a similar assessment of the standoff: "He's going to punish the rest of us simply because he can't get his way."