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.”
The president has also, just in recent days, focused his attention on bathroom remodeling, guest selection on cable news programs, golf course design, the genetics of an NFL quarterback and renovating the Reflecting Pool alongside the Lincoln Memorial. All the while, on matters of substance, President Bystander has expressed indifference to affairs of state, leaving observers to wonder who, exactly, is calling the shots in the White House while Trump pursues his many self-indulgent distractions, playing in the world’s most powerful sandbox. Politico’s Jonathan Martin noted last week, “Instead of focusing on governing, Trump spends his days chasing entertainment, attention and renovation projects that reflect a presidency stuck in adolescence.” Watching the president enjoy himself as the emcee at the Kennedy Center Honors served as a reminder of the thesis’ accuracy. As Congress prepared to pass the Epstein Files Transparency Act last month, the president published an item to his social media platform, trying anew to distance himself from the scandal. “Don’t waste your time with Trump,” he wrote, referring to himself in the third person. “I have a Country to run!” Left unanswered was the obvious follow-up question: Since when does Trump try to run the country?
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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