President Trump is slated to host the Kennedy Center Honors on Sunday night in an event that will pay tribute to the actors Sylvester Stallone and Michael Crawford, the singers Gloria Gaynor and George Strait, and the band Kiss.
While past presidents have typically watched from a designated box in the opera house of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Mr. Trump will be the first president to host the event, putting his administration’s cultural takeover of Washington and its institutions on vivid display.
Mr. Trump boycotted the honors entirely in his first term amid pushback from several of the artists who were being honored. But since he regained office, he has ensured a friendlier reception at the prestigious arts venue.
He purged Democrats from the institution’s traditionally bipartisan board of directors, installed himself as chairman and replaced the center’s longtime president with a loyalist. He personally approved the honorees of what is the venue’s marquee event, saying in August that he had rejected some candidates whom he characterized as “wokesters.”
His choices embodied the pop culture of the 1980s: the glam rock band known for their painted faces and pyrotechnic spectacle; the diva behind the disco anthem “I Will Survive”; the action megastar who portrayed Rocky and Rambo; the country hitmaker with a signature cowboy flair; and the original Phantom in “The Phantom of the Opera.”
“The greatest that we’ve seen,” Mr. Trump said at a ceremony in the Oval Office on Saturday ahead of the main gala, in which he bestowed the honorees with medallions.
The program, which is being taped for broadcast on CBS on Dec. 23, has historically been a tightly scripted affair that embraces a spirit of setting aside politics to celebrate the arts. It is typically attended by prominent actors, musicians, politicians and major arts donors, and usually centers on an array of tributes and retrospectives. Mr. Trump’s predecessors in hosting the event include Walter Cronkite, Caroline Kennedy, Stephen Colbert, Glenn Close and Queen Latifah.
In August, when Mr. Trump announced his intention to host the show, he said he had been asked to take on the job because he would get “much higher ratings.”
On Saturday, with the honorees lined up behind him, he sounded ready to be criticized for his performance.
“I’m sure they’ll give me great reviews, right, you know?” he said. “They’ll say, ‘He was horrible, he was terrible, it was a horrible situation.’” He added: “No, we’ll do fine. I’ve watched some of the people to host — Jimmy Kimmel was horrible.”
(Mr. Kimmel, the late-night talk show host, who Mr. Trump has repeatedly said should be fired from his post, has not hosted the Kennedy Center Honors, although he has hosted other awards shows, and he was one of the comedians who paid tribute to David Letterman at the 2012 honors.)
This year’s honors, the 48th staging of the annual event, will be the first held during a period of major upheaval at the Kennedy Center. Dozens of staff members have been fired or have quit since the Trump administration took over the center. Its president, Richard Grenell, who was ambassador to Germany in Mr. Trump’s first term, has vowed to rid the institution of “woke propaganda.” Mr. Trump has taken a special interest in renovating the building, securing $257 million for repairs in a government spending bill.
One of the most visible changes will be the redesign of the Kennedy Center Honors medallion. The center ditched the traditional rainbow ribbon design that debuted at the first ceremony in 1978, which honored Fred Astaire, George Balanchine and others. The new medallion, designed by Tiffany & Company, has a navy blue ribbon.
The honorees arrived in Washington to a typical weekend of fanfare — though with an enhanced role for the president, who delivered remarks at the traditional State Department dinner after the Oval Office event.
In a speech that touched on immigration enforcement, Christmas decorations at the White House and the Kennedy Center’s marble (“big beautiful slabs — you don’t get ’em like that anymore”), Mr. Trump praised the talents of the honorees.
“It’s a cultural heritage that you’ve created — each of you in a very different way, most of you in a very different form, catering to different people, frankly, but you add it up and it’s 100 percent of our population,” he said.
Julia Jacobs is an arts and culture reporter who often covers legal issues for The Times.
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