{"id":143219,"date":"2025-08-13T20:02:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-13T20:02:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/143219\/"},"modified":"2025-08-13T20:02:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-13T20:02:11","slug":"trump-announces-kennedy-center-honorees-including-gloria-gaynor-and-kiss-and-says-he-will-host-the-event-himself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/143219\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump announces Kennedy Center honorees \u2014 including Gloria Gaynor and KISS \u2014 and says he will host the event himself"},"content":{"rendered":"

President Trump on Wednesday named country music star George Strait, actor Sylvester Stallone, singer Gloria Gaynor, the rock band KISS and actor-singer Michael Crawford as the first group of Kennedy Center honorees<\/a> under his leadership. He also announced that he would host the awards program in December.<\/p>\n

Trump named himself the chairman in February<\/a> after firing the center\u2019s previous chairman and members of its board of trustees who, he said, \u201cdo not share our Vision for a Golden Age in Arts and Culture.\u201d<\/p>\n

He announced this year\u2019s honorees in a post on Truth Social Tuesday morning, in which he also teased a potential name change for the famed Washington, D.C., cultural institution.<\/p>\n

\u201cGREAT Nominees for the TRUMP\/KENNEDY CENTER, whoops, I mean, KENNEDY CENTER, AWARDS,\u201d he wrote<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He also suggested in the post that the center, which he said had \u201cfallen on hard times, physically,\u201d would be \u201cback to the absolute TOP LEVEL of luxury\u201d and \u201cWILL SOON BE MAKING A MAJOR COMEBACK!!!\u201d<\/p>\n

\"From<\/p>\n

From left: George Strait, Sylvester Stallone and Gloria Gaynor. (Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Erika Goldring\/Getty Images for Strait to the Heart, Bryan Steffy\/Getty Images for amfAR and Dia Dipasupil\/Getty Images for Tribeca Festival)<\/p>\n

Historically, honorees have been picked by a bipartisan committee. In a press conference announcing this year\u2019s group, Trump said<\/a> he was \u201cabout 98% involved\u201d in the selection process and that he \u201cturned down plenty\u201d of candidates for being \u201ctoo woke.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump insisted that he initially did not want to host the awards later this year, but was convinced to do it by other members of the center\u2019s leadership.<\/p>\n

\u201cI said, \u2018I am the president of the United States. Are you fools asking me to do that?\u2019\u201d Trump said Wednesday, describing the interaction. He added that he believes that, with him as host, the show \u201cwill be quite successful.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Kennedy Center Honors were first established in 1978. Over the decades, stars representing a broad range of artistic disciplines have been named honorees. Presidents traditionally attended the annual ceremony, but Trump opted not to go<\/a> to any of the events during his first term after certain honorees said they would not take part if he was in the audience.<\/p>\n

Rather than keeping his distance as he did during his first four years in the White House, Trump has taken a much more active role in the center\u2019s operations than any of his predecessors. Beyond naming himself chairman, he indicated that he would be involved in deciding which acts would be asked to perform there.<\/p>\n

Several artists, including comedian Issa Rae, author Louise Penny and the cast of the Broadway musical Hamilton, canceled scheduled events at the center after Trump took over.<\/p>\n

Musical artists make up the majority of this year\u2019s honorees. Gaynor was the voice of one of the defining songs of the disco era \u201cI Will Survive.\u201d Strait is among the most prolific artists in country music history, with more than 30 albums that have achieved gold or platinum status. KISS \u2014 comprised of Paul Stanley, Gene Simmons, Ace Frehley and Peter Criss \u2014 deployed outrageous costumes and stage pyrotechnics to cement themselves as icons of arena rock. Crawford made a major impact on both stage and screen, particularly with his performance as the lead in The Phantom of the Opera. Stallone exploded onto the scene as the titular character in the 1976 classic Rocky before becoming a action-movie superstar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"President Trump on Wednesday named country music star George Strait, actor Sylvester Stallone, singer Gloria Gaynor, the rock…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":143220,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[185,3988,171,50784,1936,85036,31760,85037,11756,85038,1807,68987,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-143219","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-country-music","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-george-strait","12":"tag-getty-images","13":"tag-gloria-gaynor","14":"tag-kennedy-center","15":"tag-kennedy-center-honorees","16":"tag-kiss","17":"tag-michael-crawford","18":"tag-president-trump","19":"tag-sylvester-stallone","20":"tag-united-states","21":"tag-unitedstates","22":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115023245771692975","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143219\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/143220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}