Donald Trump presented this year’s Kennedy Center honorees with their medals during a ceremony in the Oval Office on Saturday, but he also made some predictions about how the ceremony would fare in audiences and how he would conduct himself in hosting the event.
Namely, Trump said he would do better than Jimmy Kimmel, the late-night host who hosted several Oscar shows.
“We’ve never had a president host the awards show before. This is the first time,” Trump told reporters.
“I’m sure they’ll give me great reviews, right? You know, they’ll say he was horrible. He was horrible. It was a horrible situation. No, we’ll be fine,” Trump said.
Trump then added that he had “observed some of the people who hosted. Jimmy Kimmel was horrible, and some of those people. If I can’t beat Jimmy Kimmel in terms of talent, then I don’t think I should be president.”
Kimmel has long directed his biting humor at Trump, and the president has taken to social media to criticize the ABC host and call for his firing. In September, after Kimmel made a joke referencing Charlie Kirk’s assassination, Trump’s FCC Chairman Brendan Carr warned stations that aired the late-night show. Two major station groups, Nexstar and Sinclair, pulled the show, and ABC later took it off the schedule. But the network reinstated Kimmel the following week, after a backlash.
At the Oval Office ceremony, Trump also predicted that Sunday’s show, which will air later this month on CBS, “will be the highest-rated show they’ve ever done.”
“They got really good grades, but there’s nothing like what’s going to happen tomorrow night.”
Trump did not receive the Kennedy Center Honors during his first term, after some of the honorees said in 2017 that they would boycott a White House reception that typically precedes the ceremony.
But just weeks after returning to office this year, Trump fired all of Joe Biden’s appointees to the Kennedy Center board, ensuring that his own loyalists would dominate the arts institution’s governance. It also guaranteed that Trump would be elected chairman of the board. The former president, Deborah Rutter, was ousted and replaced by Ric Grenell, who was acting director of national intelligence during Trump’s first term.
Trump said he was “98 percent involved” in selecting this year’s honorees: Sylvester Stallone, George Strait, Gloria Gaynor, KISS and Michael Crawford. In August, Trump said he “turned down a lot.” “They were too awake. I had a few wake-ups,” he said. He blasted previous selections as including too many “radical left crazies.”
Later Saturday, the honorees will be feted by Trump and others at a ceremony at the State Department.
The ceremony has previously been hosted by figures ranging from Queen Latifah to Walter Cronkite, with the president staying in the presidential box at the Kennedy Center Opera House.
In August, when Trump announced he would host, he said: “I was asked to host. I said, ‘I’m the president of the United States. Are you asking me to do this.’ “Sir, you will get much higher grades.” I said, “I don’t care. I am the president of the United States. I won’t do it. They said, “Please.” And then [chief of staff] Susie Wiles said, “Sir. I would like you to be the host. I said, ‘OK, I’ll do it.’
