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President Donald Trump joked about renaming the revamped Kennedy Center after himself as he compered the performing arts venue’s annual awards evening in Washington, D.C., Sunday.
“This place is hot,” the president said during his remarks at the 48th annual Kennedy Center Honors, as he admired the building’s latest makeover, carried out to his own specifications. “The Trump-Kennedy Center. I mean, the Kennedy Center. I’m sorry. This is terribly embarrassing.”
The president went on to honor the veteran Hollywood action star Sylvester Stallone, Kiss frontman Gene Simmons, disco icon Gloria Gaynor, country singer George Strait, and Michael Crawford, who originated the role of the Phantom in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera, a Trump favorite.
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Among those in attendance for the event was Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Attorney General Pam Bondi, making up a strong conservative contingent in the audience.
The show will be broadcast on CBS on December 23 and was preceded by a medal ceremony at the White House and black tie State Department dinner for the honorees on Saturday night.
Taking questions from reporters on the red carpet beforehand Sunday’s bash, Trump, flanked by his wife Melania Trump, was asked directly: “Will you rename The Kennedy Center to The Trump Center?”
“It’s not up to me,” he answered. “We have a board. The first lady is the honorary chairwoman.”
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Melania is actually one of five honorary chairs of the institution, the other four being her four predecessors as first lady, while the president has installed himself as chairman of its Board of Trustees and replaced the center’s slate of Democrat-appointed trustees with a selection of allies.
Trump did so in February in the interest of purging the Kennedy Center of its perceived liberal leanings as part of his culture war against “woke” values, characterizing the institution’s previous programming as consisting largely of drag shows and “anti-American propaganda” and claiming it was promoting a divisive leftist political ideology.
After stamping his own mark on its output, the president attended the opening night of a new production of the Broadway musical Les Miserables in June at which he was both booed and cheered as the gala was picketed by drag queens and boycotted by some of its performers.
The choice of honorees at Sunday’s awards were equally reflective of his personal taste. Trump admitted in August that he had been “98 percent involved” in selecting the lineup, according to CNN, a determination that, ordinarily, would be made by an artist committee based on board recommendations and public requests.
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Hailing Stallone, Simmons, Gaynor, Strait, and Crawford from the stage, the president said: “Tonight, we are seeing pure talent on full display. Nothing is more inspiring, nobody has ever done it better than the people you’re watching and honoring tonight, and perhaps no one ever will.”
“This is fantastic, isn’t it?,” Trump continued. “It is just so incredible. This is the greatest evening in the history of the Kennedy Center, not even a contest. Our country is back – they tried to get [Joe] Biden to do this four years in a row. I would have watched.”
His remarks, and the political allegiance of most in attendance, ran contrary to a promise made by Kennedy Center President Richard Grenell at Saturday’s State Department banquet, at which he declared that the venue “needs to be a place of bipartisanship.”
“It needs to be a place that we come together and we celebrate together, and we don’t care who you voted for for president,” Grenell said.
