Trump Hosts Kennedy Center Honors Dinner in Washington

At the event, President Trump hosted a dinner—a first for a sitting U.S. president—and presented medals to the 2025 Kennedy Center Honors recipients, which included artists such as George Strait, Michael Crawford, Sylvester Stallone, Gloria Gaynor, and the band KISS. Transcript of President Trump's Remarks. The White House has not yet released a full official transcript of the dinner's entire remarks (as the event only recently concluded). However, video clips shared on X capture a key portion of President Trump's opening remarks at the State Department Dinner. Based on the subtitles of the footage, here's a compiled transcript of his statement: "If we've done something they've never done before... then I'm going to do something that's never been done before. The President of the United States is hosting at the behest of a certain television network. And I'm doing it because I think it's very important. We all go out and do something. And if it can make a difference, that's great. But we have great people, and I have no problem doing it. These are some of the greatest people ever... and congratulations to all of you."
This aligns with reports at the time that Trump emphasized his historic role as host and praised the honorees as "the greatest ever." The event was also livestreamed on platforms like YouTube and Rumble, with additional coverage on C-SPAN and plpl News. To view the full video (now archived), visit C-SPAN's White House Events page or the Kennedy Center's official site. If a full transcript is available later today, it will likely appear on whitehouse.gov.