What To Know
- The 2025 Kennedy Center Honors, hosted by President Donald Trump, drew a record low of 3.01 million viewers.
- This year’s ceremony honored George Strait, KISS, Gloria Gaynor, Michael Crawford, and Sylvester Stallone, and marked the first time a sitting president hosted the event.
- Trump appointed himself chair of the Kennedy Center board and recently renamed the venue to include his own name.
Despite Donald Trump‘s prediction that this year’s Kennedy Center Honors would be “the highest-rated show that they’ve ever done,” the 2025 ceremony hit a record low, losing over one million viewers from last year.
According to Variety, citing Nielsen Live + Same Day Panel + Big Data numbers, the President Trump-hosted ceremony averaged 3.01 million viewers. This was down 25 percent on the 2024 Kennedy Center Honors, which at the time posted a record low of 4.1 million viewers.
This year’s Kennedy Center Honors — which were held in Washington, DC, on December 7 and aired on CBS on December 23 — recognized country music star George Strait, metal band KISS, singer Gloria Gaynor, and actors Michael Crawford and Sylvester Stallone.
Trump, who became the first sitting President to host the ceremony, took to Truth Social on the day of the broadcast to hype up the event. “At the request of the Board, and just about everybody else in America, I am hosting the event,” he wrote.
On December 6, the day before the ceremony, Trump told press at the White House, “It’s going to be something that I believe, and I’m going to make a prediction: This will be the highest-rated show that they’ve ever done and they’ve gotten some pretty good ratings, but there’s nothing like what’s going to happen tomorrow night.”
Previous hosts of the Kennedy Center Honors have included Walter Cronkite, Caroline Kennedy, Stephen Colbert, David Letterman, Queen Latifah, and more.
After returning to office in early 2025, Trump removed several bipartisan board members at the Kennedy Center, installed new members, and then appointed himself chair of the board.
More recently, he changed the venue’s name to The Donald J. Trump and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts. However, some critics have argued that the name change can’t happen legally without Congressional approval.
CBS News has refused to acknowledge the name change. According to The Washington Post, Jack Renaud, CBS’ senior director of standards and practices, wrote in an email, “It would take Congressional approval to officially change the name. Therefore, CBS News will continue to use the ‘Kennedy Center.’”
