Slipped past, KRASNOV's taking over Kennedy Center meant he fired David RUBENSTEIN (no Vogue cover for Melanie)

Remember years ago that "the Carlyle Group" was a big boogyman here? I had zero clue to what it was, only that it was something in the Neocon Iraq attack that we detested. My cluelessness turned into mystification to find out that RUBENSTEIN came from the Jimmy CARTER admin, where there was a nest of vipers at his breast: Tweety (Chris MATTHEWS for the young'uns), Pat CADDELL, now RUBENSTEIN and probably others. In later years, when this outfit became known for vast riches, RUBENSTEIN's profile was more about his buying (the Magna Carta?) and other historic knickknacks. And article is bursting with his billions more in humanitarian and other fundings.

But when KRASNOV took over the Kennedy Center and installed himself as the boss, it was yes another travesty but the detail that RUBENSTEIN was the boss he replaced somehow didn't filter through down to my level. This is not to cry-for-him-Argentina/RUBENSTEIN since the article points out he, indeed, wasn't big on Dem ideology (or just not-CARTER?) for starters. The article points out that his type of billionaire is a fraction of the new type and is in the Endangered status. It's just gobsmacking the extent of his worthy fundings and of KRASNOV's personal vindictiveness and destruction.

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https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2025/12/david-rubenstein-carlyle-kennedy-center-private-equity/684985/
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.... Several weeks earlier, Donald Trump had fired him as the chair of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Rubenstein chairs many elite institutions, but the Kennedy Center might be seen as the capstone of his résumé. Explaining his decision, Trump had posted on Truth Social that Rubenstein did not “share our Vision for a Golden Age in Arts and Culture.” The president announced that the “amazing” new chair of the center would instead be one “DONALD J. TRUMP.” ....

Being a lawyer was not, he came to realize, his calling. He told Sorensen several times that he yearned to work in politics and public policy. His ambition was not workaday; Rubenstein said that he had the White House in his sights. Sorensen made a few phone calls, and at age 25, Rubenstein became chief counsel to the charismatic senator Birch Bayh, a Democrat from Indiana. Bayh entered the 1976 Democratic presidential primary with high hopes but flamed out, laid low in part by his support for abortion rights. Rubenstein dialed Sorenson again. “Well, do you have any more candidates that I might work for?” he asked. Sorensen put Rubenstein in touch with a powerful lobbyist, who in turn connected him with a southern Democratic presidential candidate who needed staff. Rubenstein signed on. “I didn’t know Carter from a hole in the wall,” he told me. “I can’t say I had a compelling desire to work for Jimmy Carter.” ....

That reverie held no kick for him. Rubenstein had tired of playing the mercenary. And, he told me, “nobody thought I was a great lawyer.” It was the Roaring ’80s on Wall Street; he saw peers from the political world, men lacking anything like his IQ, getting wealthy. One morning, he read that former Treasury Secretary William Simon had invested $330,000 in a greeting-card company and made nearly $70 million in 18 months. Why not hang out a shingle, he said to himself, and try my hand in this world? Rubenstein quit his law firm and, with three partners and fundraising help from the financier Edward Mathias, obtained $5 million in seed capital to launch Carlyle in 1987; the founders named the company after the historic New York hotel to confer a touch of class. The game to which these men sought entry was known as private equity. Most major private-equity funds sat in financial capitals: New York, London, and Hong Kong. Carlyle’s headquarters faced Pennsylvania Avenue, in between the White House and the Capitol. “If I had moved to New York to do it, nobody would have taken me seriously,” Rubenstein told me. “I didn’t have investment-banking experience, and all the other private-equity firms have been started by investment bankers.” ....

A business titan is not nature’s rebel. Rubenstein’s vote to honor Pence for standing up to Trump likely did not escape the president’s notice. So maybe that counts for courage. But couldn’t a man with all that money, and all that power, do something more for the country he loves? Rubenstein shook his head and gave me a look that suggested that, like most of his class, he’d already made up his mind.

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