Donald Trump shakes up Kennedy Center, announces winners and major renovation

Donald Trump names Kennedy Center honorees, plans renovations, hosts ceremony.

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump announced the first group of Kennedy Center Honors nominees under his leadership as chairman of the center. They are country music star George Strait, actor Sylvester Stallone from “Rocky,” singer Gloria Gaynor, rock band Kiss, and actor-singer Michael Crawford. Trump will also host the awards show.

Donald Trump also said he’ll “fully renovate” the entire infrastructure of the Kennedy Center to make it a “crown jewel” of arts and culture in the United States.

“We’re going to bring it to a higher level than it ever hit,” the president said, adding the venue would be featured in next year’s celebrations of America’s 250th anniversary.

Even though Trump said he didn’t want to host the show, he agreed when asked to.

During his first time as president, the Republican leader skipped the Kennedy Center Honors awards ceremony because artists said they wouldn’t go out of protest. He became the new chairman of the Kennedy Center this year and fired the board of trustees, putting supporters in their place.

In a post on Tuesday on Truth Social, Trump hinted that the center, which was previously known as the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, would get a new name and be brought back to its former glory.

“GREAT nominees for the TRUMP/KENNEDY CENTER, whoops, I mean, KENNEDY CENTER, AWARDS,” Trump wrote. He said work was being done on the site that would bring it “back to the absolute TOP LEVEL of luxury, glamour, and entertainment.”

“It had fallen on hard times, physically, BUT WILL SOON BE MAKING A MAJOR COMEBACK!!!” he wrote.

The Kennedy Center said on its social media feed that it was “honored” to meet Trump, who was there for the third time since January.

“Thanks to his advocacy, our beautiful building will undergo renovations to restore its prestige and grandeur,” the venue said.

Trump complained during a March visit that the building is in a state of “tremendous disrepair.”

Donald Trump said he was “about 98% involved” in picking the winners, even though he had said he wanted to be more involved in the process. He said he “turned down plenty” of names because the people were “too woke,” which means they were too left. He said that the artists he named on Wednesday were “great people,” and some of them were his favorites.

In the past, the winners have been chosen by a bipartisan advisory group. Past winners have included George Balanchine, Tom Hanks, Aretha Franklin, and Stephen Sondheim. On Tuesday, the Kennedy Center press office did not answer a message asking how this year’s winners were chosen.

Donald Trump has talked about giving singer-songwriter Paul Anka and actor Sylvester Stallone Kennedy Center Honors status in the past. Stallone is one of three stars Trump named as Hollywood ambassadors earlier this year. Anka was meant to sing “My Way” at Trump’s first inauguration, but she changed her mind at the last minute.

There have been many singers who have won the Kennedy Center Honors since they began in 1978. Until Trump’s first term, presidents from both parties usually went to the ceremony every year, even if they didn’t agree with the recipient publicly.

When Republican George W. Bush was in office, famous liberals like Barbra Streisand and Warren Beatty were honored. When Democrat Bill Clinton was in office, famous conservatives like Charlton Heston were honored.

In 2017, honoree Norman Lear said he wouldn’t go to a White House party because he didn’t agree with Trump’s plans to cut federal arts spending. As a result, Trump and first lady Melania Trump skipped the Kennedy Center event and didn’t go back during his first term. Cher, Lin-Manuel Miranda, and Sally Field were among the honorees at that time. They were all vocal Trump foes.

Donald Trump has taken a stronger stand on the Kennedy Center since he got back into office and has become more involved in running it. In addition to making himself chairman and changing the board, he has said that he will make choices about the center’s programming and has promised to stop events with drag performers.

Some artists have said even worse things about the steps. The producers of the hit Broadway show “Hamilton” dropped out of putting it on in 2026 in March, saying that Trump’s aggressive takeover of the institution’s leadership was the reason.

Republicans in the House added a change to a spending bill that Trump signed into law in July to rename the Opera House at the Kennedy Center after Melania Trump. However, the venue has not yet been given a new name. Maria Shriver, a Democrat and niece of the late President Kennedy, called a different House plan to name the whole center after Trump “insane.”