In a move that has sent ripples through the American arts community and the nation’s capital, President Donald Trump on August 13, 2025, took the stage at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts to announce his handpicked slate of recipients for the 2025 Kennedy Center Honors. This year’s honorees—disco legend Gloria Gaynor, country icon George Strait, the flamboyant rock band Kiss, British actor Michael Crawford, and Hollywood star Sylvester Stallone—represent a throwback to the glitz, machismo, and spectacle of the 1970s and ’80s. But the announcement was about much more than celebrating artistic achievement. It marked the latest chapter in Trump’s ongoing campaign to reshape American cultural institutions in his own image—a campaign as brash and unapologetic as the man himself.
Standing before a packed Hall of Nations, Trump declared, “We’ll make it better than it ever was, frankly. It’ll be something that people are going to be very proud of.” According to TIME, the President emphasized his personal involvement in the process, saying he was “about 98-percent involved. No, they all went through me.” He didn’t shy away from the political overtones, either. “I shouldn’t make this political because they made the Academy Awards political and they went down the tubes. So they’ll say, ‘Trump made it political.’ But I think if we make it our kind of political, we’ll go up, OK? Let’s see if I’m right about that.”
The Kennedy Center Honors, a tradition since 1978, have long been considered an apolitical celebration of lifetime achievement in the arts. Presidents have typically attended as guests of honor, but rarely have they interjected themselves so forcefully into the selection process. Trump, however, has made it clear that he sees the event—and the institution itself—as fair game for his culture-war agenda. His picks for this year’s awards, as reported by TIME and Al Jazeera, reflect a deliberate nostalgia for the era of his own rise to fame, and a rejection of what he derides as “woke” culture. “I turned down plenty. They were too woke. I had a couple of wokesters,” he told reporters, once again blending arts and politics in a way that has become his signature.
Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Center has been swift and sweeping. In February 2025, he purged the institution’s Board of Trustees—including the chairman—and installed loyalists who promptly elected him as chair. “I have decided to immediately terminate multiple individuals from the Board of Trustees, including the Chairman, who do not share our Vision for a Golden Age in Arts and Culture,” Trump wrote at the time, according to Al Jazeera. The changes didn’t stop there. Trump’s administration sent a directive to the Smithsonian, ordering it to align with his vision of “Americanism,” and even restored a Confederate statue near the White House. At the Kennedy Center itself, the transformation has been both symbolic and literal: portraits of Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance now hang alongside those of their wives, and House Republicans have floated the idea of renaming the Opera House for First Lady Melania Trump.
All of this has not gone unnoticed—or unopposed. Performers and productions have canceled or boycotted the Kennedy Center in protest of Trump’s changes. The touring production of Hamilton, comedian Issa Rae, the opera Fellow Travelers, and a touring cast of Les Misérables have all pulled out, citing objections to what they see as the politicization of a national cultural landmark. Some artistic partners have resigned their roles advising the center on programming, and other major D.C. events, including those around World Pride, have been canceled. The controversy has turned the Kennedy Center Honors—once a unifying celebration—into a flashpoint in the country’s ongoing culture wars.
Trump, for his part, appears undeterred. He has big plans for the Kennedy Center, promising a full renovation of its infrastructure and touting it as a centerpiece of upcoming national celebrations. “In the coming months, we’ll fully renovate the dated and, really, the entire infrastructure of the building and make the Kennedy Center a crown jewel of American arts and culture once again,” he said, as reported by Al Jazeera. He even linked the event to his broader campaign to crack down on crime in Washington, D.C., asserting, “We have the right location, and soon we will be a crime-free area.”
Earlier this week, Trump invoked the capital’s Home Rule Act to take control of the local police force, deploying members of the National Guard to patrol city streets—despite the fact that violent crime in the city is at a 30-year low, a statistic Trump has dismissed as fraudulent. “You’re gonna see a big change in Washington crime stats very soon—not the stats that they gave because they turned out to be a total fraud. The real stats,” he insisted. When questioned about the legal limits on federalizing the city’s police, Trump suggested he would seek to extend his control, either through congressional action or, if necessary, by declaring a national emergency. “If it’s a national emergency, we can do it without Congress,” he said. “We’re going to do this very quickly, but we’re going to want extensions. I don’t want to call a national emergency. If I have to, I will, but I think the Republicans in Congress will approve this pretty much unanimously.”
Trump’s cultural ambitions extend beyond the Kennedy Center. He has tied the institution and the upcoming Honors to the United States’ 250th anniversary in 2026, as well as the country’s roles as host for the Olympics and the World Cup. “I’m going to be president for the Olympics. I’ll be president for the World Cup. And the 250th is going to be maybe more exciting than both,” Trump said. “It’s a great celebration of our country. We’re going to be using this building for a lot of the celebration.”
The reactions to Trump’s overhaul of the Kennedy Center and its Honors have been as polarized as the country itself. Supporters see it as a long-overdue reclamation of American culture from what they view as elite, left-leaning influences. Critics argue that Trump is politicizing and undermining institutions meant to transcend partisan divides, turning them into tools for personal and political gain. The cancellation of performances and resignations of artistic partners underscore the depth of opposition within the creative community.
As the December awards show approaches—set to air on CBS—Washington and the nation will be watching to see whether Trump’s gamble pays off. Will his brand of showmanship and nostalgia draw new audiences, or will it further alienate the artistic establishment and the broader public? One thing is certain: the Kennedy Center, once a bipartisan bastion of American culture, now stands at the very heart of the country’s culture wars, remade in the image of a president who never shies from the spotlight—or from a fight.
