Trump to Host CBS’s Kennedy Center Honors, Celebrating Kiss, Sylvester Stallone, Gloria Gaynor & More
Actor Sylvester Stallone, glam rockers Kiss, country music star George Strait, disco diva Gloria Gaynor, and actor-comedian-singer Michael Crawford were named to this year’s list of Kennedy Center Honorees, as announced by President Donald Trump on Wednesday, August 13. Trump will also host the 48th annual Honors.
“I have agreed to host. Do you believe what I have to do?” said Trump.
The announcement of the honorees was teased on X (formerly Twitter) in a post that read: “Coming soon… A country music icon, an Englishman, a New York City Rock band, a dance Queen and a multi-billion dollar Actor walk into the Kennedy Center Opera House…”
👀Coming Soon👀
A country music icon, an Englishman, a New York City Rock band, a dance Queen and a multi-billion dollar Actor walk into the Kennedy Center Opera House…. pic.twitter.com/hX48btQPx5
— The Kennedy Center (@kencen) August 12, 2025
“The 48th Kennedy Center Honorees are outstanding people, an outstanding group — incredible,” stated Trump of the honorees. “We can’t wait to celebrate the Kennedy Center Honors.”
The announcement of the annual gala and its honorees came after the controversial decision by the POTUS to remove all Democratic members from the bipartisan Kennedy Center board just four weeks into his second inauguration. He then became the first president to be elected chairman of the Kennedy Center.
In a statement to reporters on February 10 after the shake-up, Trump noted, “I’m going to be chairman of it. We’re going to make sure that it’s good and that it’s not going to be woke. There’s no more woke in this country. This woke has caused us a fortune and caused us our reputation. But the reputation is coming back very, very rapidly.”
Trump did not attend the Honors performances during his first term in office.
“This is a very exciting project,” Trump said at the press conference on Wednesday. “We’re going to do something that will go rapidly, relatively inexpensively, and we’ll make it better than it ever was.”
The Kennedy Center Honors will take place in December and will be produced by and televised on CBS, though the airdate is not yet confirmed.
Recently, tensions between CBS and the current administration have drawn attention as the network announced last month that The Late Show will end in May 2026 for financial reasons, following Paramount’s $16 million settlement with Trump over a 2024 60 Minutes interview with then–Vice President Kamala Harris. While the network said the decision was unrelated, some have speculated the move was linked to Trump, especially as Paramount was finalizing its Skydance merger and host Stephen Colbert remained a frequent critic of the president.
The Kennedy Center Honors, TBA, CBS
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