What is Donald Trump’s true love?
Golf? No. Big Macs? No. Red neckties long enough to serve as a Cessna runway? No. Melania? Please. He’d rather disrobe and kiss himself in a full-length mirror.
Donald Trump’s true love is the entertainment industry.
The clown show that is Trump 2.0 is a made-for-TV production every insufferable day. The man gets dark and gloomy without the lights, camera, action. You know why he does not read? It makes for terrible TV. You know why he lashes out at Hollywood, award shows, late night comedy and actors who publicly trash him?
This shatters his fantasy of being an adored member of the tribe.
Trump never wanted to be president. He just wanted NBC to renew “The Apprentice.” Now the world is upside down thanks to a programming decision.
Trump forced himself back into the tribe this week when announcing the 2025 Kennedy Center honours. They will go to Sylvester Stallone, Gloria Gaynor, Kiss, Michael Crawford and George Strait.
There were media snickers about how this was a who’s who from the ’80s. That’s unfair. The annual honours, established in 1978, are bestowed upon five recipients for lifetime contributions to arts and culture.
This is not contemporary — it’s retrospective.
Trump now chairs the Kennedy Center after launching a coup earlier this year and replacing the board with political loyalists who wouldn’t know an operetta from a dirty limerick. So all things considered, this year’s list was reasonable. Don’t be surprised if the Class of 2026 includes Caitlyn Jenner, Mike Tyson, Dean Cain, Scott Baio and Pepe the Frog.
For the last decade, Hollywood and the media (guilty as charged) have run Trump through a wood chipper in the hopes of exposing the pathological lies, the corruption, the lawlessness, the grifting, the cheating, the wretched betrayal of norms, social good and democratic civility.
The media should keep doing this, though I am increasingly disheartened by the scaredy-cat vibes south of the border. What happened to the Washington Post and “60 Minutes”?
But forget the media. Maybe it’s time for showbiz to try a different tack.
Trump was oddly subdued at his Kennedy Center presser this week. The fire-and-brimstone was MIA. He seemed genuinely keen on showcasing the arts or his desire to renovate an esteemed cultural institution. I did get nervous when he vowed to spruce up the marble columns. They may soon be gilded with gold leaf and festooned with glittery stencils of his silhouetted face.
Trump is now doing everything he can to distract from the Epstein files. He may soon dispatch stealth bombers to patrol the skies over Baltimore and Chicago.
But the Kennedy Center honours? This is not a distraction.
This is coming from the lump of coal in his chest where a human heart should beat.
So for the sake of humanity, showbiz, hold your nose and bring this lunatic into the tribe. This is your chance to distract him by flattering him. He can’t slap a 500 per cent tariff on Canadian oxygen if he’s on a cruise ship with Brad Pitt and the cast of “F1.” He can’t backstab Ukraine if he’s spooning Kris Jenner.
Do you think Trump wants to hang out with that mayo-loving rageaholic Stephen Miller or meet with Steven Spielberg to discuss a bold new sequel: “Close Encounters of the Trump Kind.” He would blow off his summit with Vladimir Putin if Taylor Swift invited him to come over for a private listening session of her upcoming album, “The Life of a Showgirl.”
Trump only hates Taylor because she doesn’t see him as a show boy.
Entertainers should consider how these Kennedy Center Honors are not MAGA.
Kiss? The dudes in that band wore full-face makeup and intergalactic drag. Michael Crawford was the Phantom of the Opera. Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” was a feminist anthem you won’t hear when far-right evangelicals convene for lemonade slushies to discuss the nuclear family.
Is Mr. Stallone in the same thespian bucket as past recipients, including Gregory Peck, Sidney Poitier, Jack Nicholson or Robert De Niro? No.
But Sly loves the Donald and that’s the only road map.
A revealing quote from Trump this week: “The Kennedy Center honours have been among the most prestigious awards in the performing arts. I wanted one, was never able to get one. I would have taken it. I waited and waited and waited and I said, ‘To hell with it, I’ll become chairman.’”
The man is a toddler always in need of a hug.
Bring him into the tribe, Hollywood. Distract him from inflicting more blunt force trauma on the world. Make him believe he is your true love — until he is gone.
And with that, friends, I bid you farewell for three weeks. May the rest of your summer be filled with sights and sounds worthy of the Kennedy Center.
