President Trump hosted the Kennedy Center Honors on Sunday after the performance. 2025 Kennedy Center Honorees with their medals during a ceremony in the Oval Office on Saturday, calling the list of artists “legendary in so many ways.”
“Billions and billions of people have watched them over the years,” said Mr. Trump, the first president to command the stage rather than sit in an Opera House box to open the show.
This year's winners are actors Sylvester Stallonesingers Gloria Gaynor And George Straitrock band Kiss and actor-singer Michael Crawford.
Mr Trump said they were “one of the greatest entertainers and actors, performers, musicians, singers and songwriters to ever walk the earth.”
On Saturday, he described the honorees, whose selection he took an active role in, as “perhaps the most accomplished and distinguished class” ever assembled.
Mr Trump said on Saturday they are a group of “incredible people” who represent “the very best in American art and culture” and that “I know most of them and have been a fan of them.”
Asked when he arrived how he found time to prepare, Mr. Trump said he “didn't really prepare very well.”
“If you look at the great hosts, Johnny Carson, Bob Hope, they are great,” Trump said, disparaging the previous host. Jimmy Kimmelwhom the president has repeatedly criticized, even to the point of calling on ABC to remove him from his position as host “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”
“But no, I think you just want to be free and not have much to prepare for. Do you know who you need to be? You have to be yourself,” Mr. Trump said.
“I have a good memory, so I can remember a lot, and this is very fortunate,” the president said. “But I just wanted to be myself. You have to be yourself. Johnny Carson, he was himself.”
Mr. Trump took on a role that had been filled in the past by journalist Walter Cronkite and comedian Stephen Colbert, among others. Before Trump, presidents watched the show with the honorees.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, one of several Cabinet secretaries attending the ceremony, said he looked forward to Mr. Trump serving as emcee.
“Oh, this president, he's so relaxed in front of those cameras, you know, and so funny, I can't wait for tonight,” Lutnick said as he arrived with his wife, who sits on the Kennedy Center's board of directors.
Julia Demarie Nihinson/AP
Trump said in August that he had agreed to host the show. At a State Department awards dinner on Saturday, he said he was doing this “at the request of a television network.” He predicted that the transmission airing December 23 on CBS and Paramount+will have the best ratings ever.
Since 1978, this award has recognized celebrities for their influence on American culture and the arts. This year's course participants are a who's who of pop culture, including Stallone with his Rocky and Rambo films, Gaynor with her feminist anthem I Will Survive and Kiss with their colorful cartoon make-up and displays of smoke and pyrotechnics on stage. Country music superstar George Strait and Tony Award-winning actor Michael Crawford will also be honored.
Mr. Trump said perseverance is a trait shared by all artists.
“Some of them had legendary failures, failures that you have to read about in the newspapers because of their level of fame,” he said from the stage. “But in the words of Rocky Balboa, they showed us that you have to keep moving forward, just keep moving forward.”
He said many politicians, celebrities and other audience members also share this trait.
“I know many of you are persistent,” Trump said in his opening remarks. “Many of you are miserable, terrible people. You are persistent. You never give up. Sometimes I want you to give up, but you don’t.”
The ceremony was expected to be emotional for the members of Kiss. The band's original lead guitarist Ace Frehley died in October after he was injured in a fall. Co-founder Gene Simmons, speaking on the red carpet as he and other honorees arrived at the ceremony, said the president assured him there would be an empty chair among the members of Kiss in Frehley's memory.
Stallone said being honored at the ceremony was like being “in the eye of a hurricane.”
“This is an amazing event,” he said. “But you're stuck in the middle of it. It's hard to realize it until the next day… but I'm incredibly touched by it.”
Crawford also said it was “humiliating, especially late in your career.”
Gaynor said receiving such an honor “feels like a dream come true.” “This kind of recognition is the pinnacle,” she said on the red carpet.
Mike Farris, an award-winning gospel singer who performs with Gaynor, said she is a dear friend. “She actually survived,” Farris said. “What an iconic song.”
Actor Neal McDonough said he was presenting Stallone with an award that he said had long since expired due to the script and Stallone's performance. “But that’s not the best part,” McDonough said. “The best part is that Sly is one of the greatest guys I've ever met.”
Previous winners have come from a variety of artistic forms, be it dance (Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham), theater (Stephen Sondheim, Andrew Lloyd Webber), film (Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks) or music (Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell).
Mr. Trump upended decades of bipartisan support for the center by ousting its leadership and packing its board of trustees with Republican loyalists, who then elected him chairman. He criticized the center's program and the building's appearance and said, perhaps jokingly, that he would rename it the “Trump Kennedy Center.” He received more than $250 million from Congress to renovate the building.
The presidents of each political party have from time to time found themselves face to face with artists of opposing political views. Republican Ronald Reagan attended an awards ceremony for Arthur Miller, a playwright who championed liberal causes. Democrat Bill Clinton, who signed the assault weapons ban into law, honored Charlton Heston, the actor and gun rights advocate.
During Trump's first term, many award winners were open critics of the president. In 2017, during Trump's first year in office, award winner and film producer Norman Lear threatened to boycott his own ceremony if Trump attended. Mr. Trump remained on the sidelines throughout this term.
Mr Trump said he was actively participated in the selection of the 2025 laureates and rejected some recommendations because they were “too woke.” While Stallone is one of Trump's “special ambassadors” to Hollywood and has compared Trump to George Washington, the political views of Sunday's other guests are less clear.
Strait and Gaynor have said little about their politics, although Federal Election Commission records show Gaynor has given money to Republican organizations in recent years.
Simmons spoke favorably of Mr. Trump when Mr. Trump ran for president in 2016. But in 2022, Mr. Simmons told Spin magazine that Mr. Trump “only cared about himself” and criticized the president for encouraging conspiracy theories and public expressions of racism.
Kiss member Paul Stanley condemned Trump's attempt to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden and said Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021 were “terrorists.” But after Trump won in 2024, Stanley called for unity.
“If your candidate lost, it's time to learn from it, accept it and try to understand why,” Stanley wrote on X. “If your candidate wins, it's time to understand that those who don't share your views also believe they are right and love this country as much as you do.”
