“If I Can’t Beat Out Jimmy Kimmel In Terms Of Talent, Then I Don’t Think I Should Be President”
Donald Trump presented this year’s Kennedy Center honorees with their medals at an Oval Office ceremony on Saturday, but he also made some predictions about how the ceremony will perform in the ratings and how he’ll perform while hosting the event.
So Trump said he’ll do better than multiple Oscars late-night host Jimmy Kimmel.
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“We’ve never had a president host the awards before. This is the first,” Trump told reporters.
“I’m sure they’ll give me great reviews, right? You know, they’ll say he sucked. It was terrible. It was terrible. No, we’ll be fine,” Trump said.
Trump then continued: “That he watched some of the people who hosted. Jimmy Kimmel was terrible, and some of these people. If I can’t beat Jimmy Kimmel talent-wise, then I don’t think I should be president.”
Kimmel has long directed his biting humor at Trump, and the president has criticized the ABC host on social media, calling for his firing. In September, Trump’s FCC chairman Brendan Carr warned stations airing the late-night show after Kimmel made a joke referencing the Charlie Kirk assassination. Two major station groups, Nexstar and Sinclair, pulled the show, and ABC later removed it from the schedule. However, the network reinstated Kimmel the following week following the backlash.
At the Oval Office ceremony, Trump also predicted that Sunday’s show, which will air on CBS later in the month, “will be the highest-rated show they’ve ever done.”
“They got some pretty good ratings but it’s not like it’s going to happen tomorrow night.”
Trump skipped the Kennedy Center Honors Ceremony in his first term after some of the 2017 honorees said they would boycott the White House reception that usually takes place before the ceremony.
But just weeks after returning to office this year, Trump fired all of Joe Biden’s appointees to the Kennedy Center board and ensured that his own loyalists dominated the arts institution’s management. This also led to Trump being elected chairman of the board. The previous president, Deborah Rutter, was dismissed and replaced by Ric Grenell, who served as acting director of national intelligence during Trump’s first term.
Trump said he was “98% in” on the selection of this year’s honorees: Sylvester Stallone, George Strait, Gloria Gaynor, KISS and Michael Crawford. In August, Trump said he had “turned down plenty.” “They were awake too. I had a few wakers,” he said. He criticized previous elections for containing too many “radical left lunatics”.
Later Saturday, the honorees will be greeted by Trump and others at a State Department ceremony.
Various names, from Queen Latifah to Walter Cronkite, had previously hosted the ceremony, and the president stayed in the presidential box of the Kennedy Center Opera House.
When Trump announced he would host in August, he said: “I was asked to host. ‘I’m the president of the United States. This is what you’re asking me to do?’ I said. ‘Sir, you will get much higher scores.’ ‘I don’t care,’ I said. I am the president of the United States of America. ‘I won’t do this.’ ‘Please’ they said. And later [chief of staff] ‘Sir,’ said Susie Wiles. ‘I’d like you to host it.’ “I said, ‘Okay, I’ll do it.'”
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