Oh, look at that, Donald Trump was wrong again. After predicting strong television ratings as host of the 2025 Kennedy Center Honors, CBS’ broadcast of the annual event in fact drew its lowest viewership in history, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
After the 2024 honors received 4.1 million viewers, Nielsen data for this year’s broadcast showed a precipitous drop, with only 3.01 million viewers tuning in — a massive 26% year-over-year decline.
The Kennedy Center Honors were held on December 7th to celebrate Trump’s hand-picked honorees: KISS, Sylvester Stallone, George Strait, Gloria Gaynor, and Michael Crawford. After skipping the event entirely the last time he was in office, the Former Reality TV Star-in-Chief had his narcissistic hands all up in this year’s ceremony, serving as emcee for the evening.
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“At the request of the Board, and just about everybody else in America, I am hosting the event,” he posted on Truth Social before the TV broadcast.
His flop was foretold when CBS cut his 12-minute opening remarks to just two. Trump had even kinder dumber words for some of the performers: “They probably don’t like me very much. But all I know is they’re big, right? We want bigness. We don’t care if they like Trump — we want bigness, right?”
Well, he wanted bigness and he got it — the biggest Kennedy Center flop of all time. This, after data reportedly showed a 40% decline in ticket sales and 50% decline in total revenue after Trump was “voted” (read: installed himself as) the Kennedy Center Board Chair in February.
The special aired on December 23rd, just five days after Trump’s hand-picked Kennedy Center Border of Trustees voted to rename the once-prestigious building “The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.” While CBS acknowledged the name change in an opening voice over and title card, CBS News reportedly ignored the name change in official coverage because “it would take a Congressional approval to officially change the name.”
The one downside to witnessing another great Trumpian disaster? Trump’s pre-show Truth post asked his followers if they “would like me to leave the Presidency in order to make ‘hosting’ a full time job?” if he did well. Based on these numbers, it looks like he’ll be keeping his day job — unfortunately.
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