Jimmy Kimmel returned to late-night on Monday after his winter break, and he used his first monologue of 2026 to tease Donald Trump about the low ratings from the Kennedy Center Honors broadcast.
“You know he hosted an awards show over the break,” Kimmel said at the top of Monday’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” broadcast. “After boasting about what a great host he is and how much better he is than I am and how huge his ratings would be, Trump hosted the lowest rated Kennedy Center Honors telecast of all time.”
The Kennedy Center Honors, held on Dec. 7 and hosted by Trump, averaged 3.01 million viewers, according to a report from Nielsen Live + Same Day Panel + Big Data. That represents a 25% decline from 2024’s numbers, which set a record low with 4.1 million viewers.
“Boy, I’d hate to be the White House intern who had to tear that headline out of all the papers and eat ’em,” Kimmel added. “You know, as I recall, he said he’d step down if this happened. He said, ‘If I can’t beat out Jimmy Kimmel, then I don’t think I should be president.’ Hey, a deal is a deal. Back to Mar-a-Lago you go.”
Trump was the first sitting president in history to host the Kennedy Center Honors, which celebrate “individuals whose unique contributions have shaped our world,” according to the organization’s website. The 2025 honorees were George Strait, Sylvester Stallone, KISS, Michael Crawford and Gloria Gaynor.
The president has developed a fixation on the Kennedy Center during his second term. In December, he renamed the historic forum “The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.” The name change was met with significant uproar, and several scheduled acts cancelled their performances in the fallout.
Love Film & TV?
Get your daily dose of everything happening in music, film and TV in Australia and abroad.
From Variety US