United States President Donald Trump has unveiled his slate of picks for the Kennedy Center Honors, an annual awards show designed to honour actors, musicians, designers and creative professionals who have dedicated their lives to the performing arts.
On Wednesday, Trump appeared on stage at the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, one of the premier stages in Washington, DC, in a show of power over the national cultural institution.
“We’ll make it better than it ever was, frankly,” he said of the awards show. “ It’ll be something that people are going to be very proud of.”
This year’s five honourees include disco singer Gloria Gaynor, country music musician George Strait, the rock band Kiss, British performer Michael Crawford and actor Sylvester Stallone, star of the classic films Rocky and Rambo.
Trump, a former reality TV star, also revealed that he would host the award show himself. In his opening remarks, he suggested his allies strong-armed him into taking the hosting gig.
“I’ve been asked to host. I said, ‘I’m the president of the United States. Are you fools asking me to do that?’” Trump said. “ So I have agreed to host. Do you believe what I have to do?”
Wednesday’s announcement was Trump’s latest foray into the arts, as he seeks to reshape the US’s cultural institutions to reflect his agenda.
Exerting power over the Kennedy Center
During Trump’s first term, from 2017 to 2021, the Republican leader never attended the Kennedy Center Honors, breaking with a longtime presidential tradition.
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Since the ceremony’s beginnings in 1978, presidents have been regular attendees, except in rare cases, including Cold War-era negotiations and the 1979 Iran hostage crisis.
But since returning to the White House for a second term in January, Trump has not only sought to make his presence known at the Kennedy Center, but he has sought to wield power over its programming.
On February 7, Trump announced he would purge the Kennedy Center’s governing board and declared his intention to lead the institution as its chair.
“I have decided to immediately terminate multiple individuals from the Board of Trustees, including the Chairman, who do not share our Vision for a Golden Age in Arts and Culture,” Trump wrote at the time. “We will soon announce a new Board, with an amazing Chairman, DONALD J. TRUMP!”
By February 12, the new Kennedy Center board had made good on its promise to elect Trump as chair.
Since then, Trump has expanded his reach into the country’s arts and culture spheres. On Tuesday, for instance, his administration revealed it would undertake an “internal review” of several Smithsonian museums, to “ensure alignment with the President’s directive to celebrate American exceptionalism”.
Trump also teased his new vision for the Kennedy Center Honors — and appeared to troll critics who expressed outrage over Republican proposals to rename the performing arts center after the Republican leader.
“GREAT Nominees for the TRUMP/KENNEDY CENTER, whoops, I mean, KENNEDY CENTER, AWARDS,” Trump wrote on social media in the lead-up to Wednesday’s announcement.
He pledged the revamped award show would reflect “the absolute TOP LEVEL of luxury, glamour, and entertainment”.
A crackdown on crime in the capital
The Kennedy Center Honors is expected to air on the TV channel CBS in December, and it broadcasts from its eponymous theatre.
In Wednesday’s speech, Trump tied the upcoming ceremony to his broader campaign to crack down on crime in Washington, DC.
“ In the coming months, we’ll fully renovate the dated and, really, the entire infrastructure of the building and make the Kennedy Center a crown jewel of American arts and culture once again,” he said.
“ We have the right location, and soon we will be a crime-free area.”
Earlier this week, Trump invoked the capital’s Home Rule Act to take control of the local police force and deployed members of the National Guard to patrol the city’s streets, despite the fact that violent crime in the city was at a 30-year low.
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Trump, however, has denied the legitimacy of those statistics, a claim he made again at the Kennedy Center on Wednesday.
“ You’re gonna see a big change in Washington crime stats very soon — not the stats that they gave because they turned out to be a total fraud. The real stats,” he said.
The Republican leader also hinted at a potential political bent to the reimagined Kennedy Center Honors. He has previously denounced the Kennedy Center’s programming, pledging to cancel performances including drag shows and book classic Broadway hits instead.
In response, the touring Broadway production of the hit musical Hamilton cancelled its scheduled stop at the Kennedy Center, as did comedian Issa Rae and the opera Fellow Travelers. Performers in a touring production of Les Miserables also boycotted shows to protest Trump’s changes.
“I shouldn’t make this political because they made the Academy Awards political and they went down the tubes,” Trump said on Wednesday.
“They’ll say, ‘Trump made it political,’ but I think, if we make it our kind of political, we’ll go up, OK? Let’s see if I’m right about that.”
