Donald Trump presented this year’s Kennedy Center Honorees with their medals in an Oval Office ceremony on Saturday, but he also made some predictions about how the ceremony will do in the ratings and how it will do when it hosts the event.
I mean, Trump said he would do better than Jimmy Kimmel, the late night host who has hosted many Oscar broadcasts.
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“We’ve never had a president host the awards before. This is a first,” Trump told reporters.
“I’m sure they’re going to give me great reviews, right? You know, they say it was horrible. It was terrible. It was a horrible situation. No, we’re going to do well,” said Trump.
Trump then went on to say that he has “seen some of the people who host. Jimmy Kimmel was awful, and some of these people. If I can’t beat Jimmy Kimmel in terms of talent, then I don’t think I should be president.”
Kimmel has been directing his biting humor at Trump, and the president took to social media to slam the ABC host and call for his firing. In September, after Kimmel made a joke in reference to Charlie Kirk’s murder, Trump’s FCC chairman, Brendan Carr, warned the stations that carried the late-night show. Two major station groups, Nexstar and Sinclair, pulled the show, and ABC then removed it from the schedule. But the network brought Kimmel back the next week, after a backlash.
At the Oval Office ceremony, Trump also predicted that Sunday’s show, which will air later in the month on CBS, “will be the highest-rated show they’ve ever done.”
“It’s been some pretty good ratings, but it’s nothing like what’s going to happen tomorrow night.”
Trump skipped the Kennedy Center Honors during his first term, after some of the honorees in 2017 said 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 dominate the art institution’s governance. This also ensured that Trump was elected president of the board. The previous president, Deborah Rutter, was ousted, replaced by Ric Grenell, who served as acting director of national intelligence in Trump’s first term.
Trump said he was “98% involved” in choosing this year’s list of honorees: Sylvester Stallone, George Strait, Gloria Gaynor, KISS and Michael Crawford. In August, Trump said he “rejected a lot.” “They were too woke. I had a few wakesters, “he said. He blasted previous selections as including too many “radical leftist lunatics.”
Later Saturday, the honorees will be presented by Trump and others during a State Department ceremony.
The ceremony was previously hosted by figures ranging from Queen Latifah to Walter Cronkite, with the president staying in the presidential box of the Kennedy Center Opera House.
In August, when Trump announced that he would host, he said, “I’ve been asked to host. I said, “I’m the president of the United States. You’re asking me to do it.” ‘Sir, you get much higher ratings.’ 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 host.’ I said, ‘OK, I’ll do it.'”
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