It was a thrill for me, a humble arts reporter whose stories are typically relegated to the back pages of any newspaper, to be crammed into the Kennedy Center (KC) press pool along with America’s top White House reporters. Newsrooms across America clearly considered this year’s Kennedy Center Honors to be a political story, and several reporters expressed surprise when I mentioned that I was there representing a local arts outlet.
“So … how exactly do you cover a red carpet?” was inevitably the next question from White House reporters at outlets like Reuters and Agence France-Presse, who were more accustomed to documenting Elon Musk’s son wiping his boogers on the Oval Office desk than to interviewing aging rock stars about their careers and fashion choices.
It seemed that a night out at Trump’s Kennedy Center was going to be a new adventure for all of us.
President Donald J. Trump on the Kennedy Center Honors red carpet December 7, 2025. Photo by yassine el mansouri courtesy of The Kennedy Center.
I went into the Kennedy Center Honors 1) open to critiquing the show on its artistic merits; and 2) determined to spill the tea on the political lunacy surrounding the event, even if that meant never being invited back. I was nervous to enter a space that has come to feel less like an artistic home and more like a political minefield to many artists and journalists, especially when security was ramped up to 100 in anticipation of the president’s attendance. Will the bomb-sniffing dog smell my traitorous anti-Trumpian thoughts?
First, the positives: The new Kennedy Center team put on a pretty good show. Was it “the greatest night in the history of the Kennedy Center, yada, yada,” that Trump promised? Nah. Not even close. But considering the limitations that the new KC team was working with: difficulty in getting A-list artists, and extraordinary turnover in staffing (due to Trump’s team firing or alienating scores of experienced staffers and replacing them with political appointees), they put on a pretty good show.
And the dinner! In previous KC Honors, journalists were politely shown to the exit before food was served, but Trump’s Kennedy Center had food for all with apparent disregard for the cost of such opulence. God bless us, everyone, I can only imagine that this is what it must be like to dine at Mar-a-Lago: Caviar! Roast beef! Canapés! Endive salads served by waiters who seamlessly blended in with the wallpaper after handing you a fresh glass of champagne. The lemon tarts alone were nearly enough to make me sign my MAGA enrollment papers on the spot. Democracy be damned, they were that good.
If you ever get invited to dinner at Donald Trump’s house, well, first you should question the life choices that brought you there, but then you should GO. Go and stuff your pockets with the leftovers. Donald Trump may not know what free and fair elections are, but, man, does he know how to throw a party!
David Phelps (performer), Kari Lake (political guest), and Ambassador Ric Grenell (Kennedy Center Interim Executive Director) on the Kennedy Center Honors red carpet December 7, 2025. Photos by yassine el mansouri courtesy of The Kennedy Center.
If serving an excellent dinner were the goal of the night, the event would have been a success. But the Kennedy Center Honors, now in its 47th year, is meant to honor performing artists who have enriched American culture. And, as with most things in Trump’s America, artistry took a backseat to virulent, partisan politics throughout the evening. The show itself, which will be broadcast on CBS and Paramount+ on December 23, went off without a hitch, despite Trump’s insistence on hosting it himself, with long-winded monologues seemingly designed for shock value. The staging was lovely, the performers, many of them C-listers whom I had never heard of, were solid, and a few were shockingly good. The finale, a limp rendition of KISS‘s “Rock and Roll All Nite,” performed by Cheap Trick, was underwhelming yet servicable.
I came away from the night with a newfound appreciation for each of the five honorees. Sylvester Stallone actually WROTE Rocky? I had no idea! Gloria Gaynor won her first Grammy for a 1980 album of disco hits that are still played at college bars across America, and then a second Grammy 40 years later for a gospel album? That’s longevity. I even liked the guys from KISS, especially when Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons had a touching personal moment on the red carpet just two feet from me. “We’ve been together for 57 years,” Stanley told the press pool. “It’s like we’re in a marriage, but I don’t have to see him naked.” OK, Paul Stanley, you cheeky Trump aficionado. I like you.
WATCH: My Instagram coverage of the KC Honors red carpet.
Each of the honorees — Broadway legend Michael Crawford and country star George Strait rounded out the group — was handpicked by Trump himself. This marked a break from past years, when a larger committee selected a far broader range of artists across disciplines, including many ignored by Trump, like opera and classical music.
But this is Trump’s America, and, as he reminded us upon his arrival at the event, he believes the five honorees he chose are “totally distinct but together represent the totality of America.” This tells you a lot about Trump: his “America First” politics now extend to the arts, where imported traditions barely register, and — as shown by the exclusion of jazz in his “totality” of American art forms — he is firmly parked in the 1980s, his cultural heyday.
The talent on the carpet had clearly been instructed to avoid talk of politics. “What was the mood like at the State Department induction ceremony?” one reporter asked KISS’s Gene Simmons. “I’ll tell you when I know you better,” Simmons skillfully evaded.
But, ooh boy, did that change when the politicos started walking the carpet. First up was Kari Lake, the TV news host–turned–failed Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate whom Trump named Senior Advisor to the U.S. Agency for Global Media. Lake spoke more like a Republican chatbot than an actual human, and I caught even a few measured White House reporters rolling their eyes as she spouted off talking points like “The fake news and legacy media would rather not even cover the Department of War than abide by the basic rules of journalism. It shows you they are only interested in tearing people apart and getting them to break the law.”
Kari, if this is how you walk a red carpet, you must be a hoot at parties!
Next up was talk show host–turned–CMS Administrator Dr. Oz and his doting wife, who looked at him with the most doe-eyed self-deprecating adoration as a journalist asked her what it was like to be “a cabinet wife.” Apparently, Mrs. Dr. Oz loves it. The “cabinet wives” love to get together. I listened to this exchange in bewilderment, feeling like I had been transported back to the 1950s, and imagining the other Stepford Wives who frequent the dinners of this administration.
After much waiting around (I learned that being part of a presidential press pool involves a lot of waiting, needing to pee, and sore feet), Trump arrived on the red carpet. He was his usual bombastic, self-aggrandizing self. You know what he sounds like; I don’t need to repeat any of the tired talking points. His 25-minute jaunt down the red carpet basically went like this: “Bobby Jr. great, Joe Biden sleepy, I’ve already ended eight wars, my tariffs are the best, even my Spotify playlist is better than yours.” The usual.
But what really got my hackles up on the carpet was Richard Grenell, the former US Ambassador to Germany and Acting Director of National Intelligence, whom Trump appointed to lead the Kennedy Center in February 2025. Grenell has a reputation for being nearly as bombastic as his boss, and he did not disappoint on the red carpet.
Ambassador Ric Grenell (Kennedy Center Interim Executive Director) at the Kennedy Center Honors December 7, 2025. Photo by yassine el mansouri courtesy of The Kennedy Center.
“You know me,” Grenell started, as he introduced himself to a group of journalists, “I’m always going to critique the media.”
He continued: “I find it so offensive that so many arts reporters, who have failed to talk about the crisis in arts institutions, suddenly want the Kennedy Center to take the brunt of the problem.”
(Sidebar to highlight just a handful of the times that arts. reporters. have. talked. about. the. crisis. in. arts. institutions.)
Now back to Ambassador Grenell, and what, for me, became the quote of the evening: Lesbian Othello.
“One of the reasons that arts institutions are dying is because you have programming that is too fringe, and you’re not being responsible with the money. Corporations don’t want to fund an all-lesbian cast of ‘Othello.’ You need to have programming that appeals to the masses. I came in with one simple change. When it comes to programming, you need to be able to combine ticket sales with donors and corporations. If you can’t get your idea in the public space to net zero, if you are going to lose money because corporations don’t want to fund you … then don’t ask us to go into debt.”
Am I the only one who came away from this diatribe thinking, “Well, now I really want to see Lesbian Othello!?”
Artists, and presumably most people who appreciate art, know that Grenell’s insistence that art should survive solely on private dollars is absurd. If we only ever created art that we knew corporations would bankroll, we would never innovate at all. “Risk, fail, risk again,” goes the mantra at one of America’s pre-eminent artistic incubators, the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center: Without room to experiment, and without public support from agencies including the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities (both of which this administration is busily gutting), innovation dries up and American culture gets a lot less vibrant.
And let’s be real: when the Trump administration says it wants art that appeals to “the masses,” what it really wants is a return to the 1980s monoculture, when the president first became nationally famous.
Perhaps — since Grenell isn’t aware of how frequently arts journalists write about the financial plight of arts institutions — he is also unaware that many of the biggest recent success stories in American theater are rooted in the very diversity of views and representation Trump’s team keeps trying to erase. I asked my good friend ChatGPT (no, really, we are buddies) for a list of recent Broadway hits with the highest ROI (return on investment). Among them are: The Lion King (Black people!), Avenue Q! (Gay!), Hedwig and the Angry Inch (Even gayer!), and The Book of Mormon (I mean…). And then, of course, there is the musical about the 18th-century treasury secretary, portrayed by a certain Puerto Rican rapper/playwright/lyricist. What corporation would have thrown money at that when first hearing the pitch?
So … maybe Lesbian Othello isn’t such a bad idea after all?
After insulting the very journalists he was speaking to and then complaining that artists make stupid artistic decisions, Grenell concluded by reminding us that he likes to take the high road. “I have consistently invited to my box many Democratic Senators and leaders. No one has taken me up on it,” he complained.
If it is true that Grenell has invited Democratic lawmakers to join him at Kennedy Center performances, I applaud him. But are we really surprised that they do not want to attend in the midst of … all this?!
Yes, I know I’m being super snarky and divisive myself, but I’m actually all for reaching across the aisle, which is one reason I went to the Kennedy Center Honors with a (relatively) open mind. If they had been able to set politics aside for even just one night and focus on the artists, I would probably have done the same. Instead, I’m here writing this snarky article.
But I’ll end it with an olive branch. What if the Kennedy Center’s leadership honored the storied tradition of this institution? What if, Ambassador Grenell, we all tried to compromise and learn from each other? Doesn’t that sound better than continuing this avalanche toward mutually assured destruction? This is how I do it with my kids: I start by saying something nice, then you say something nice back.
I’ll go first: The staff at the Kennedy Center was professional and kind throughout my visit. I even came across a performer who knocked my socks off. David Phelps is a Christian singer based in Nashville whom I poo-pooed as a mediocre stand-in for the Broadway talent that I figured had no interest in attending Trump’s event. Well, the joke was on me because Phelps has the voice of an angel. I’m genuinely grateful to Trump’s Kennedy Center for introducing me to an artist I’d never have found on my own.
It’s possible to both criticize something and learn from it. So, while y’all are camped out at our cultural center for the next few years, how about we all try to learn from each other? We’ll give you your Christmas concerts if you let our drag queens back in.
In the meantime, I’ll be over here rallying local artists to write Lesbian Othello for Ric Grenell: A New American Musical!
Editorial Note: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of Nicole Hertvik in her capacity as a writer and do not necessarily reflect the views of DC Theater Arts, its staff, or its Board of Directors. Although Nicole serves as DCTA’s Editor-in-Chief, DC Theater Arts is a nonpartisan arts journalism nonprofit committed to independent coverage of the arts.
