President Donald Trump damaged his own prospects of putting his name on the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, a legal analyst said.

It remains unknown whether Trump could ever have turned the monument to the late President John F. Kennedy into a joint memorial, but Joshua Kolb, senior counsel at the Democracy Defense Fund, said that outcome is now off the table after a judge this week rejected his demand to add some form of tribute to himself at the venue. The Kennedy Center, located in Washington, D.C., opened in 1971 as a national memorial to Kennedy, the country's 35th president.

The ruling prompted what Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio), the last Democrat remaining on the center's board, described as a presidential "tantrum" with the board. The board then ordered the theater shut down entirely.

He went into a tantrum," Beatty said. "I mean, let me just make it simple. It was the most unprofessional thing that I've ever witnessed or been a part of. He went into name-calling, everything from trying to say that I was an obstructionist, I was dumb. He said, 'I think you're incompetent.' And I said, 'I know you're incompetent.'"

Kolb told CNN on Wednesday that Trump caused his own problems when he said he would shut the center down if he could not have his name on it.

"Trump gave the game away," Kolb wrote on BlueSky.

"The judge also said that they actually can't shut down the Kennedy Center," he said. "That will be in violation of the judge's preliminary injunction, and it will be courting contempt. We've already gone to court to enforce the judge's preliminary injunctions. That's the latest victory that we had in court. It's been very clear repeatedly over the course of months that the Kennedy Center cannot be shut down in violation of that court order."

A preliminary injunction is a court order issued while a case is still pending, and a party that defies one can face contempt proceedings.

"He tied the two issues together in his Truth Social posts yesterday," Kolb said, noting that Trump "admitted that if he can't get his way, if he can't get his name on the Kennedy Center in violation of the law, then he will shut the Kennedy Center down in violation of a court order that can't stand."

Pressed on the claim that the center is closing for "safety reasons," Kolb pointed to Beatty's comments describing a nationwide tradition of doing renovations while staying open, keeping funding coming in and ensuring "the show goes on." The dispute now turns on whether the board's shutdown order is carried out and whether the court treats a closure as a violation of the injunction that Kolb's fund has already gone to court to enforce.