President Donald Trump hosted the annual Kennedy Center Honors on Sunday, praising Sylvester Stallone, Kiss, Gloria Gaynor and the other honorees as being “legendary in so many ways.”
“Billions and billions of people have watched them over the years,” Trump, the first president to command the stage instead of sitting in an Opera House box, said to open the show.
He said the honorees, who also include country music superstar George Strait and Tony Award-winning actor Michael Crawford, are “among the greatest artists and actors, performers, musicians, singers, songwriters ever to walk the face of the Earth.”
Since returning to office in January, Trump has made the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, which is named after a Democratic predecessor, a touchstone in a broader attack against what he has lambasted as “woke” anti-American culture.
Trump, who said in August that he had agreed to host the show, said Saturday at a State Department dinner for the honorees that he was doing so “at the request of a certain television network.” He predicted the broadcast, scheduled to air Dec. 23 on CBS and Paramount+, would have its best ratings ever.
Trump assumed a role that has been held in the past by journalist Walter Cronkite and comedian and Trump nemesis Stephen Colbert, among others. Before Trump, presidents watched the show alongside the honorees. Trump skipped the honors altogether during his first term.
Asked when he arrived for the ceremony how he had found time to prepare, Trump said he “didn’t really prepare very much.”
“I have a good memory, so I can remember things, which is very fortunate,” the president said. “But just, I wanted to just be myself. You have to be yourself. Johnny Carson, he was himself.”
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, one of several Cabinet secretaries attending the ceremony, said he was looking forward to Trump’s hosting job.
“Oh this president, he is so relaxed in front of these cameras, as you know, and so funny, I can’t wait for tonight,” Lutnick said as he arrived with his wife, who is on the Kennedy Center board.
Since 1978, the honors have recognized stars for their influence on American culture and the arts. Members of this year’s class are pop-culture standouts, including Stallone for his “Rocky” and “Rambo” movies, Gaynor for her feminist anthem “I Will Survive” and Kiss for its flashy, cartoonish makeup and onstage displays of smoke and pyrotechnics.
Trump said persistence is a trait all the artists share.
“Some of them have had legendary setbacks, setbacks that you have to read in the papers because of their level of fame,” he said from the stage. “But in the words of Rocky Balboa, they showed us that you keep moving forward, just keep moving forward.”
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 during a fall. The band’s co-founder Gene Simmons, speaking on the red carpet when he and the other honorees arrived for the ceremony, said the president had assured him there would be an empty chair among the members of Kiss in memory of Frehley.
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 caught up in the middle of it. It’s hard to take it in until the next day. ..: but I’m incredibly humbled by it.”
Crawford also said it was “humbling, especially at the end of a career.”
Gaynor said it “feels like a dream” to be honored. “To be recognized in this way is the pinnacle,” she said on the red carpet.
Mike Farris, an award-winning gospel singer who was performing for Gaynor, said she is a dear friend. “She truly did survive,” Farris said. “What an iconic song.”
Previous honorees have come from a broad range of art forms, whether dance (Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham), theater (Stephen Sondheim, Andrew Lloyd Webber), movies (Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks) or music (Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell).
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