The 2025 Kennedy Middle Honors will probably be broadcast tonight, celebrating this 12 months’s class of honorees and their contributions to the performing arts. Viewers can watch the ceremony on CBS and Paramount+ beginning at 8 p.m. ET/PT.
President Trump’s administration has made sweeping modifications to the Kennedy Middle, together with ousting the chairman of its board of trustees and its president, and putting in of their place Mr. Trump and considered one of his allies, former Ambassador Richard Grenell. Final week, the White Home introduced the board had voted to rename the establishment the Trump-Kennedy Middle.
This 12 months’s Kennedy Middle Honors, which was recorded earlier this month, marks Mr. Trump’s first look on the annual occasion in his two phrases in workplace. He additionally hosted the celebration, a departure from previous years when presidents would sit with the honorees and watch the present.
In a social media submit Tuesday morning, Mr. Trump promoted the published, saying it is going to be “honoring true GREATS within the Historical past of Leisure.” He additionally wrote: “Inform me what you consider my ‘Grasp of Ceremony’ talents. If actually good, would you want me to go away the Presidency as a way to make ‘internet hosting’ a full time job?”
Who’re the 2025 Kennedy Middle Honors recipients?
Mr. Trump introduced the listing of this 12 months’s honorees over the summer season. They’re:
- George Strait
- Gloria Gaynor
- The rock band Kiss: Paul Stanley, Gene Simmons, Peter Criss and the late Ace Frehley
- Michael Crawford
- Sylvester Stallone
How one can watch the Kennedy Middle Honors
- What: President Trump hosts the Kennedy Middle Honors, celebrating George Strait, Gloria Gaynor, Kiss, Michael Crawford and Sylvester Stallone.
- Date: Tuesday, Dec. 23, 2025
- Time: 8 p.m. ET/PT
- On TV: On CBS tv stations. Discover your native station right here.
- On-line stream: Paramount+
George Strait, the King of Nation Music
With hits like “All My Ex’s Reside in Texas,” “Amarillo by Morning” and “Verify Sure or No,” George Strait is called the King of Nation Music.
The multiplatinum artist has gained dozens of awards from the Academy of Nation Music and the Nation Music Affiliation, in addition to a Grammy for greatest nation album. He was inducted into the Nation Music Corridor of Fame in 2006.
When Strait acquired a lifetime achievement award from the Nationwide Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in 2021, he mentioned his father taught him the methods of the cowboy life and that he is tried to carry on to his Western heritage all through his profession. However he additionally mentioned he was challenged early on to remain true to himself.
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“After I first signed with MCA Data in 1981, , they, all of the individuals, had been going, ‘Take the hat off,'” he mentioned, pointing at his trademark 10-gallon cowboy hat with a smile. “Now, are you able to think about if I might have accomplished that?”
A producer additionally floated the concept Strait change his identify. “My dad was so glad I did not try this,” Strait mentioned.
Gloria Gaynor, the Queen of Disco
Gloria Gaynor‘s 1978 hit “I Will Survive” has stood the take a look at of time, surviving far longer than disco did and crowning the New Jersey singer because the style’s queen.
The music gained a Grammy for greatest disco recording. When it was added to the Library of Congress’ Nationwide Recording Registry in 2016, the library mentioned “I Will Survive” turned generally known as an “emblem of ladies’s empowerment” and an anthem within the LGBTQ group.
“That music faucets into the inherent survival intuition and it faucets into the tenacity of the human spirit,” Gaynor advised CBS Information in 2016.
Taylor Hill/FilmMagic/Getty Pictures 
As she recalled just lately, when she recorded the hit, she was paralyzed from the waist down whereas recovering from a critical spinal harm after a fall onstage.
“I had been in hospital for over three months, hoping I might survive, , this trauma that I used to be going by way of, hoping that I might survive the truth that my mom had simply handed away a number of years prior,” Gaynor mentioned. “Yeah, I used to be dwelling that music, and I used to be sure that I would not be the one one.”
Legendary rock band Kiss
This 12 months’s celebration is a bittersweet second for the founding members of Kiss. Ace Frehley, the band’s unique lead guitarist, died in October, only a few weeks after he, Peter Criss, Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley had been named amongst this 12 months’s honorees.
“The saddest factor of all is that Ace could not stay lengthy sufficient to see this superb factor,” Simmons advised CBS Information.
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Kiss is called a lot for his or her hits like “Rock and Roll All Nite,” “I Was Made for Lovin’ You” and “Detroit Rock Metropolis” as they’re for his or her signature black-and-white face paint. The group rode the glam rock wave to stardom, promoting greater than 100 million data worldwide and getting into the Rock & Roll Corridor of Fame in 2014.
Simmons and Stanley’s partnership has lasted for many years, overcoming the difficulties of creating it within the music enterprise.
“I do not assume it is a coincidence that each of us are Jewish and from immigrants who skilled the Holocaust,” Stanley advised CBS Information. “I feel that innately now we have inside us compassion for different individuals but in addition a way of survival.”
Tony winner Michael Crawford
Famed composer Andrew Lloyd Webber picked Michael Crawford to play the titular function within the long-running musical “The Phantom of the Opera” when it first opened in London in 1986.
“When he performed to me the overture, the hair stood up on the again of my neck,” Crawford advised CBS Information. “I adored taking part in and creating it, constructing him.”
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After successful an Olivier Award — the U.Okay. equal of the Tony Award — for musical of the 12 months, the present opened on Broadway in New York in 1988, successful seven Tonys, together with greatest actor in a musical for Crawford.
Crawford’s profession has additionally included roles in films and on tv, however he thought of these to be auditions for his subsequent half. For him, taking part in the Phantom was a present.
“So, you wish to do the eight exhibits per week,” Crawford mentioned. “You do not wish to miss one.”
American icon Sylvester Stallone
Sylvester Stallone desires individuals to know one factor about his traditional film “Rocky.”
“Even to at the present time, I bristle once I hear it is a sports activities film,” Stallone advised CBS Information. “It isn’t. It is a love story. It begins with love.”
For Stallone, who acquired Oscar nominations for enjoying Rocky Balboa and writing the screenplay for what was named 1976’s greatest image, the movie was concerning the love between Rocky and Talia Shire’s Adrian.
“This film will rise and fall on love, not fights,” Stallone mentioned. “Everybody can type of go, oh my God, it is the little issues in life, it is the love, it is the nurturing — that is the victory.”
Taylor Hill/FilmMagic/Getty Pictures 
Stallone calls the film his biography when on the time he felt like he could not win. He went into appearing in his 20s after rising up along with his father, who Stallone mentioned was emotionally and bodily abusive. Films had been a manner for Stallone to manage, and he mentioned the mythic heroes he noticed on display screen modified his life.
“I mentioned, ‘I’ll be that man,'” Stallone mentioned. “I do not wish to be what’s on the home, however I do wish to be this noble creature.”
New Kennedy Middle Honors medallion
The rainbow-colored ribbons adorned with three gold bars which have lengthy been given to honorees had been changed this 12 months with new gold medallions.
Designed by Tiffany and Co., every medallion options an etching of the middle on one facet with rainbow colours working by way of it. The opposite facet bears every honoree’s identify and after they acquired the award.
Every medallion hangs from a ribbon that is navy blue, which the middle described as “a shade related to dignity and custom.”
Tiffany and Co. 
Tiffany and Co. 
