The ‘TrumpKennedyCenter.org’ website is taken. This comedian owns it.

On Thursday afternoon, the board of the Kennedy Center announced it had voted to rename the cultural institution the “The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.” By Friday morning a wholesale rebranding effort was underway, aided by construction workers on aerial lifts, adding the president’s name to the building’s exterior.

The organization’s leaders might have wanted a new website to replace kennedy-center.org, too. But if they’d hoped for trumpkennedycenter.org, they were out of luck. A comedian bought it months ago.

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“As soon as Trump began gutting the Kennedy Center board earlier this year, I thought, ‘Yep, that name’s going on the building,’” explains Toby Morton, a comedy writer with “South Park” and “Mad TV” credits who buys political domains and turns them into satirical websites as a form of activism. All year, Morton followed news of Trump’s takeover of the institution – how the president purged many of its existing board members, replaced them with loyalists, then announced plans to personally host the Kennedy Center Honors – and in August he snapped up the rights to both trumpkennedycenter.org and trumpkennedycenter.com.

“The rest,” he writes in an email interview with The Post, “followed on schedule.”

It’s not uncommon for people to speculatively buy website domains that could be valuable one day, often in an attempt to turn a profit. Registering a new domain usually costs around $15 to $30. But if you want one that’s already been purchased, the owner could jack up the price significantly.

Morton isn’t in the game to sell off his domains; he’s got websites for about 50 of them. Instead, he buys them with the express purpose of turning them into seemingly legit websites that, upon closer inspection, often skewer their namesakes.

Take NancyMace26.com. It initially resembles a serious political website, with a close-up of the South Carolina Republican congresswoman’s face on one side, and on the other, in steel blue font: “Nancy Mace 2026 for South Carolina Governor.” But scroll down slightly to a section titled “Words of Wisdom” and the satire becomes apparent. “I’m not here to serve, I’m here to brand,” it reads. “If that means mocking trans kids, defaming exes, inflating reimbursements, or screaming ‘groomer’ on the House floor for likes, so be it.”

At MTG2026.org, Morton presents Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) as a “fascist” who is “Building a Whiter Tomorrow.” He created a fake MAGA dating website, and owns ResignChuck.com, targeting Democratic Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer. “I’ve spent years perfecting the art of bowing,” it says, “not to the people who elected me, but to the ones who bought the room.”

Morton’s process is pretty simple. When something or someone starts “blowing up in the news,” he grabs the relevant domain name and begins plotting his parody.

But he misses out on domains all the time. “Once something is obvious to everyone, it’s usually gone. I’ve missed domains tied to sudden political scandals or politicians who explode into the spotlight overnight.” He will “forever regret” not registering a Jake Tapper domain before the release of the book he co-wrote, “Original Sin,” which largely placed the blame for Democrats’ 2024 losses on aides to former president Joe Biden, claiming they hid the extent of his decline.

Morton, who does script rewriting for film and television, also sometimes buys ad space on physical billboards; one of his in Oklahoma looked like a text message from “God,” writing “I don’t belong in schools” and calling on the then-state schools’ chief to resign (he did, in September). People donate money to support Morton’s efforts, which include the occasional legal consultation “to make sure everything stays on the right side of the line.”

Morton isn’t quite ready to reveal how he plans to design his Trump-Kennedy Center websites, but, he writes, “it’ll absolutely reflect the absurdity of the moment. Lots of surprises. Some things are truly hard to parody, though.”

“The Kennedy Center has always been a cultural institution meant to outlast any one administration or personality,” he writes. “It’s meant to honor culture, not ego. Once it was treated like personal branding, satire became unavoidable.”

Morton says no one from Trumpworld or the administration has contacted him about his Kennedy Center sites, and so far no one has asked to buy them. He’s only received inquiries from “a few random lawyers confidently explaining that satire is illegal now.” The Kennedy Center – The Washington Post will continue to refer to it as such, pending the outcome of legal challenges to its name change – did not respond to requests to comments on Morton’s ownership of the sites.

The comedian, who is based in the Midwest, has never actually been to the Kennedy Center. In theory, he’d love to see just about anything there. But, he writes, “In practice, I’m not sure my interests currently align with what would be considered appropriate programming.”

“I may check back,” he adds, “after the next rebrand.”

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