Trump suggests quitting as president and making ‘hosting a full time job’ as he gushes over his Kennedy Center efficiency | EUROtoday

Donald Trump has joked that he would possibly contemplate giving up the presidency to develop into a full-time host of awards exhibits, such because the Kennedy Center Honors, if the general public reception to his gig internet hosting this 12 months’s present is optimistic on-line.

The president wrote on Truth Social that the occasion on Tuesday night would rejoice the “true GREATS” of American tradition, including: “If really good, would you like me to leave the Presidency in order to make “hosting” a full time job?”

Since taking workplace, Trump has directed a makeover of the Kennedy Center, and this previous week introduced his newest spotlight-grabbing transfer: a plan to rename the D.C. cultural hub the “Trump-Kennedy Center.” This announcement has been met with instant opposition by Democrats, who questioned whether or not he has the authority to take action.

Tonight’s Kennedy Center Honors, an annual gala hosted by the memorial basis devoted in honor of the assassinated thirty fifth president of the United States in 1964, will honor a handful of celebrities that the president sees as being politically on his aspect: Gloria Gaynor, Sylvester Stallone, and the rock band KISS, amongst them.

But the president’s renaming of the constructing has overshadowed the occasion among the many media and provides to the final notion of the Kennedy Center’s standing as an occupied entity beneath the second Trump administration amongst its onetime supporters who’ve deserted the middle in droves over the course of the 12 months. Ticket gross sales are right down to the bottom ranges because the Covid pandemic pressured Americans to stay at residence, in accordance with a Washington Post evaluation in October.

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The president introduced a takeover of the Kennedy Center’s board earlier this 12 months, which elected him as its new chair. Since that day, the Center’s programming has shifted culturally away from acts that don’t want to be related to the brand new board or the president, together with the musical Hamilton and a sold-out present deliberate by actor and comic Issa Rae.

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Richard Grenell, Trump’s loyalist and former ambassador to Germany, is now the group’s interim president and has taken to lashing out at artists who selected to drag their performances from the Center’s calendar of upcoming occasions.

“Any performer who isn’t professional enough to perform for patrons of all backgrounds, regardless of political affiliation, won’t be welcomed,” Grenell mentioned in a press release earlier this 12 months. “In fact, we think it would be important to out those vapid and intolerant artists to ensure producers know who they shouldn’t hire — and that the public knows which shows have political litmus tests to sit in the audience.”

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But these audiences are abandoning the middle at a good larger price than its performers.

Individual exhibits between September and the top of October, analyzed by the Post, skilled a 36 % drop-off in ticket gross sales or seats in any other case stuffed by the Center.

The new board additionally moved to cancel a efficiency by the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington, D.C., regardless of the group not planning to withdraw from the schedule.

On Truth Social, the president has, prior to now, posted in regards to the Kennedy Center’s performances whereas echoing typical conservative fears and prejudices in regards to the LGBT neighborhood. In February, he claimed that “The Kennedy Center featured Drag Shows specifically targeting our youth — THIS WILL STOP.”

Under the Biden administration, the Kennedy Center hosted a number of drag performances of a non-sexual nature, together with a February 2024 occasion that featured a “drag story hour”, a semi-popular fashion of occasion the place drag queens in full costume and make-up learn storybooks to younger kids.