President Donald Trump told Daily Caller reporter Ashley Brasfield on Wednesday that he was almost entirely “involved” in the selection process of the Kennedy Center Honors recipients.
Trump announced that country singer George Strait, actors Michael Crawford and Sylvester Stallone, along with the rock band Kiss and disco singer Gloria Gaynor, will receive the Kennedy Center’s honorary award for their contributions to the American performing arts. Trump told Brasfield that he rejected many contenders for the award because they were too “woke.”
“I just wanted to ask you, thank you Mr. President, how involved were you in the selection process of these honorees?” Brasfield asked.
“I would say I was about 98% involved. They all went through me … I turned down plenty. They were too woke. I had a couple of wokesters. No, we have great people. This is very different than it used to be, very different. These are great people and they’re not, I don’t have any idea if they’re Republican … Very long answer, but I was very involved,” Trump said.
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The Kennedy Center Board elected Trump as the board chair on February 12 and terminated eighteen board members appointed by former President Joe Biden and the now-former chairman, David Rubenstein. Richard Grenell then replaced the now-former president Deborah F. Rutter, who served in the position from September 2014 to February 2025.
Among the Biden appointees ousted were former White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and former senior advisor Mike Donilon. An estimated 40 employees at the Kennedy Center had been dismissed since Trump took over the institution.
The Kennedy Center put on a drag show in 2024 titled “Dragtastic Dress-up,” which aimed to appeal to LGBTQ youth under the age of 18, The New York Times reported. Trump told reporters on Air Force One in February that “woke” has no place at the Kennedy Center.
“We don’t need woke at the Kennedy Center,” the president said. “Some of the shows were terrible. They were a disgrace that they were even put on. So I’ll be there until such time as it gets to be running right.”
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