<\/p>\n
WASHINGTON<\/strong> \u2013 Sylvester Stallone<\/a>, Kiss<\/a> and Gloria Gaynor<\/a> are among the luminaries being celebrated Sunday at the annual Kennedy Center Honors, with Donald Trump hosting the show, the first time a president will command the stage instead of sitting in an Opera House box.<\/p>\n Since returning to office in January, Trump has made the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts<\/a>, which is named after a Democratic predecessor, a touchstone in a broader attack<\/a> against what he has lambasted as \u201cwoke\u201d anti-American culture. <\/p>\n Trump said in August that he had agreed to host the show. The Republican president said Saturday at a State Department dinner for the honorees that he was doing so \u201cat the request of a certain television network.\u201d He predicted that the broadcast, scheduled to air Dec. 23 on CBS and Paramount+, would have its best ratings ever.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s going to be something that I believe, and I\u2019m going to make a prediction: This will be the highest-rated show that they\u2019ve ever done and they\u2019ve gotten some pretty good ratings, but there\u2019s nothing like what\u2019s going to happen” on Sunday night, Trump said. <\/p>\n Trump is assuming a role that has been held in the past by journalist Walter Cronkite and comedian and Trump nemesis Stephen Colbert<\/a>, among others. Before Trump, presidents watched the show alongside the honorees. Trump skipped the honors<\/a> altogether during his first term.<\/p>\n 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 \u201cRocky\u201d and \u201cRambo\u201d movies, Gaynor for her feminist anthem \u201cI Will Survive\u201d and Kiss for its flashy, cartoonish makeup and onstage displays of smoke and fire. Country music superstar George Strait<\/a> and Tony Award-winning actor Michael Crawford are also being honored.<\/p>\n The ceremony is expected to be emotional for the members of Kiss. The band\u2019s original lead guitarist, Ace Frehley<\/a>, died in October after he was injured during a fall. <\/p>\n 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).<\/p>\n Trump has taken over the Kennedy Center <\/p>\n Trump upended decades of bipartisan support for the center by ousting its leadership<\/a> and stacking the board of trustees with Republican supporters, who then elected him chair. He has criticized the center\u2019s programming and the building\u2019s appearance \u2014 and has said, perhaps jokingly, that he would rename it as the \u201cTrump Kennedy Center.\u201d He secured more than $250 million from Congress for renovations of the building.<\/p>\n Presidents of each political party have at times found themselves face to face with artists of opposing political views. Republican Ronald Reagan was there for honoree Arthur Miller, a playwright who championed liberal causes. Democrat Bill Clinton, who had signed an assault weapons ban into law, marked the honors for Charlton Heston, an actor and gun rights advocate. <\/p>\n During Trump\u2019s first term, multiple honorees were openly critical of the president. In 2017, Trump\u2019s first year in office, honors recipient and film producer Norman Lear<\/a> threatened to boycott his own ceremony if Trump attended. Trump stayed away during that entire term. <\/p>\n Trump has said he was deeply involved in choosing the 2025 honorees<\/a> and turned down some recommendations because they were \u201ctoo woke.” While Stallone is one of Trump’s Hollywood \u201dspecial ambassadors”<\/a> and has likened Trump to George Washington, the political views of Sunday’s other guests are less clear. <\/p>\n Honorees’ views about Trump <\/p>\n Strait and Gaynor have said little about their politics, although Federal Election Commission records show that Gaynor has given money to Republican organizations in recent years. <\/p>\n Kiss co-founder Gene Simmons spoke favorably of Trump when Trump ran for president in 2016. But in 2022, Simmons told Spin magazine that Trump was \u201cout for himself\u201d and criticized Trump for encouraging conspiracy theories and public expressions of racism. <\/p>\n Fellow Kiss member Paul Stanley denounced Trump’s effort to overturn his 2020 election defeat to Democrat Joe Biden, and said Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, were \u201cterrorists.\u201d But after Trump won in 2024, Stanley urged unity.<\/p>\n \u201cIf your candidate lost, it\u2019s time to learn from it, accept it and try to understand why,\u201d Stanley wrote on X. “If your candidate won, it\u2019s time to understand that those who don\u2019t share your views also believe they are right and love this country as much as you do.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2014-<\/p>\n Italie reported from New York. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.clickorlando.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" WASHINGTON \u2013 Sylvester Stallone, Kiss and Gloria Gaynor are among the luminaries being celebrated Sunday at the annual Kennedy Center Honors, with Donald Trump hosting the show, the first time a president will command the stage instead of sitting in an Opera House box. Since returning to office in January, Trump has made the John […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2190323,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[381157,324114,379438,357933,29332,22389,21741,348513,317642,353975,344160,21888,353554,305426,422784,59570,344068,364538,319685,353638,22653,377970,23943,306358,394391,30188,367254],"class_list":["post-2190322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-ace-frehley","tag-andrew-lloyd-webber","tag-arthur-miller","tag-bill-clinton","tag-bob-dylan","tag-donald-trump","tag-entertainment","tag-gene-simmons","tag-george-strait","tag-george-washington","tag-gloria-gaynor","tag-joe-biden","tag-john-f-kennedy","tag-joni-mitchell","tag-martha-graham","tag-meryl-streep","tag-michael-crawford","tag-norman-lear","tag-paul-stanley","tag-ronald-reagan","tag-stephen-colbert","tag-stephen-sondheim","tag-sylvester-stallone","tag-tom-hanks","tag-tony-award-winning","tag-u-s-news","tag-washington-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Trump-says-hes-hosting-the-Kennedy-Center-Honors-recognizing-Stallone.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2190322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2190322"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2190322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2190324,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2190322\/revisions\/2190324"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2190323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2190322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2190322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2190322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}