President Donald Trump has pitted himself against late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel for the battle he appears to think matters more than any other to American voters—TV ratings.
“If I can’t beat out Jimmy Kimmel in terms of talent, then I don’t think I should be president,” Donald Trump, a former reality TV star, said in a rambling Oval Office speech.
His comments came ahead of his hosting the 48th annual Kennedy Center Awards ceremony on Sunday, which will be broadcast on CBS on Dec. 23.
Kimmel has never hosted that ceremony. A long-time Trump critic, he has found himself consistently on the receiving end of the president’s ire since being briefly suspended by the network ABC in the aftermath of the Charlie Kirk assassination.
This year’s Kennedy Center event marks the first time in the institution’s history that a president has hosted the awards. Trump faces intense criticism for what detractors describe as a politically partisan gutting of the feted cultural center’s board and programming.
On Friday, FIFA president and newfound Trump ally, Gianni Infantino, awarded the president the soccer organization’s inaugural Peace Prize during the 2026 World Cup Draw, itself hosted at the Kennedy Center free of charge.
That honor did not exist until Trump was snubbed for the Nobel Peace Prize earlier in October, following a concerted and highly public campaign to secure himself perhaps the most coveted award on the planet.
“I look forward to celebrating with all of you at the Kennedy Center tomorrow,” Trump said Saturday. “And 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.”
In case his initial challenge had passed Kimmel by, Trump threw down the gauntlet again on Sunday night, blasting the late-night host from the red carpet ahead of the ceremony itself.
“Maybe I haven’t prepared,” he said in response to a reporter’s question about how he had prepared for the show. “Maybe you want to be a little bit loose. If you look at the great hosts Johnny Carson, Bob Hope, those of the greats. You look at the not-so-greats like Jimmy Kimmel, he was just terrible.”
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