Donald Trump has joked that he might consider giving up the presidency to become a full-time host of awards shows, such as the Kennedy Center Honors, if the public reception to his gig hosting this year’s show is positive online.
The president wrote on Truth Social that the event on Tuesday evening would celebrate the “true GREATS” of American culture, adding: “If really good, would you like me to leave the Presidency in order to make “hosting” a full time job?”
Since taking office, Trump has directed a makeover of the Kennedy Center, and this past week announced his latest spotlight-grabbing move: a plan to rename the D.C. cultural hub the “Trump-Kennedy Center.” This announcement has been met with immediate opposition by Democrats, who questioned whether he has the authority to do so.
Tonight’s Kennedy Center Honors, an annual gala hosted by the memorial foundation dedicated in honor of the assassinated 35th president of the United States in 1964, will honor a handful of celebrities that the president sees as being politically on his side: Gloria Gaynor, Sylvester Stallone, and the rock band KISS, among them.
But the president’s renaming of the building has overshadowed the event among the media and adds to the general perception of the Kennedy Center’s status as an occupied entity under the second Trump administration among its onetime supporters who have abandoned the center in droves over the course of the year. Ticket sales are down to the lowest levels since the Covid pandemic forced Americans to remain at home, according to a Washington Post analysis in October.
The president announced a takeover of the Kennedy Center’s board earlier this year, which elected him as its new chair. Since that day, the Center’s programming has shifted culturally away from acts that don’t wish to be associated with the new board or the president, including the musical Hamilton and a sold-out show planned by actor and comedian Issa Rae.
Richard Grenell, Trump’s loyalist and former ambassador to Germany, is now the organization’s interim president and has taken to lashing out at artists who chose to pull their performances from the Center’s calendar of upcoming events.
“Any performer who isn’t professional enough to perform for patrons of all backgrounds, regardless of political affiliation, won’t be welcomed,” Grenell said in a statement earlier this year. “In fact, we think it would be important to out those vapid and intolerant artists to ensure producers know who they shouldn’t hire — and that the public knows which shows have political litmus tests to sit in the audience.”
But those audiences are abandoning the center at an even higher rate than its performers.
Individual shows between September and the end of October, analyzed by the Post, experienced a 36 percent drop-off in ticket sales or seats otherwise filled by the Center.
The new board also moved to cancel a performance by the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington, D.C., despite the group not making plans to withdraw from the schedule.
On Truth Social, the president has, in the past, posted about the Kennedy Center’s performances while echoing typical conservative fears and prejudices about the LGBT community. In February, he claimed that “The Kennedy Center featured Drag Shows specifically targeting our youth — THIS WILL STOP.”
Under the Biden administration, the Kennedy Center hosted several drag performances of a non-sexual nature, including a February 2024 event that featured a “drag story hour”, a semi-popular style of event where drag queens in full costume and makeup read storybooks to young children.
