At an Oval Office event on Saturday for those receiving this year’s Kennedy Center Honors, Donald Trump took some time to talk about his role in the event. “We never had a president hosting the awards before,” he noted, adding, “If I can’t beat out Jimmy Kimmel in terms of talent, then I don’t think I should be president.”
It was probably intended as a joke, but it was an odd attempt at humor. Kimmel is a longtime entertainment professional who’s hosted awards shows; Trump is ostensibly the chief executive of the world’s preeminent superpower. There’s no reason for the president to assume he should be equally capable of serving as a master of ceremonies: The two jobs require spectacularly different skill sets.
Except, Trump doesn’t quite see it that way. On the contrary, the Republican, perhaps best known to much of the public as the host of a reality television gameshow before entering politics, apparently still wants to be seen less as a political leader and more as a star. The New York Times reported:
President Trump took the stage at the Kennedy Center Honors on Sunday night, making himself the face of an arts event he once shunned as he paid tribute to the actor Sylvester Stallone, the singer Gloria Gaynor and other artists.
While presidents typically attend the event at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Mr. Trump is the first to host it, putting his administration’s cultural takeover of Washington and its institutions on vivid display.
The event was the culmination of a bizarre series of events. Trump appointed himself chair of the Kennedy Center Board of Trustees earlier this year, and he started naming loyalists to leadership roles at the institution while purging its traditionally bipartisan board.
In the weeks that followed, the president maintained a hands-on role, personally vetoing prospective Kennedy Center honorees whom he found objectionable on ideological grounds.
What he neglected to explain is how, exactly, he managed to find the time.
There is a degree of irony to the broader circumstances. Much of Trump’s case against Joe Biden is rooted in the dubious claim that his Democratic predecessor was detached from his weighty responsibilities, allowing those around him to exert their will, taking advantage of a president who’d largely removed himself from his day-to-day duties.
It was the right condemnation, applied to the wrong president.
In recent weeks, Americans have seen their president take a great interest in a seemingly endless stream of trivialities that his modern predecessors would’ve gladly delegated to others. Trump hosted an awards show he controlled, after hosting a couple of events related to the awards show he controlled. That dovetailed with his micromanagement of a ballroom project and his proud acceptance of a fake “peace prize.”








