Refusal to Participate in Traditional Presidential Functions: Skipping the Kennedy Center Honors and Using Ceremonies for Political Purposes
Tier 5Documented2017-08-17 to 2019-12-08
Factual Summary
During his first term, Donald Trump declined to attend the Kennedy Center Honors for three consecutive years, from 2017 through 2019, becoming the only president in the ceremony's history since its inauguration in 1978 to miss the event more than once. The absences represented a departure from a bipartisan tradition in which every president, regardless of political differences with the artistic community, participated in the nation's premier cultural ceremony.
The first absence, in December 2017, followed an escalating conflict between Trump and several of the year's honorees. Three of the five artists recognized threatened to boycott or expressed doubt about attending a pre-ceremony reception at the White House. The Kennedy Center responded by canceling the traditional White House reception for the first time in the ceremony's history. Trump and First Lady Melania Trump did not attend either the reception or the gala.
The second and third absences, in 2018 and 2019, followed the same pattern. The pre-ceremony White House reception was again canceled or not held during Trump's tenure. The Washington Post noted that while some attendees expressed relief at the absence of political controversy, others lamented that the presidency's institutional prestige was missing from the occasion.
The Kennedy Center absences occurred in a broader context of disengagement from traditional presidential cultural and institutional functions. In August 2017, all 17 members of the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities resigned collectively, citing Trump's "hateful rhetoric" following the white-nationalist demonstration in Charlottesville, Virginia, where Trump said there were "very fine people on both sides." The mass resignation effectively dissolved the advisory body.
Trump's approach to presidential ceremonies more broadly reflected a pattern of converting institutional events into political performances. This included using military settings for partisan remarks, holding political rallies at or near military installations, displaying political signage at events traditionally treated as nonpartisan, and using the White House grounds for his Republican National Convention acceptance speech in August 2020, a break with the longstanding norm separating official government facilities from campaign activities.
In his second term, Trump reversed course on the Kennedy Center Honors. In 2025, he became the first sitting president to host the ceremony, presiding over the festivities honoring Sylvester Stallone, Kiss, Michael Crawford, Gloria Gaynor, and George Strait. However, reporting indicated that the 2025 ceremony also reflected changes from prior years, including alterations to the event's format that some observers characterized as politicization.
Primary Sources
1. Kennedy Center Honors broadcast archives, 2017-2019 (C-SPAN and CBS)
2. Resignation letter of the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, August 17, 2017
3. NPR: "Trumps Plan To Skip Kennedy Center Honors -- Again," November 15, 2018
Corroborating Sources
1. Washington Post: "Trump's absence at Washington's premier social event is a relief for some. But the prestige of the presidency is missed," December 5, 2019
2. ABC News: "Trump to skip Kennedy Center Honors amid boycott threat," August 2017
3. NBC News: "Trumps to skip Kennedy Center Honors for 2nd straight year," November 2018
4. HuffPost: "The Kennedy Center Honors Didn't Need Donald Trump," December 2018
5. PBS NewsHour: "Trump speaks before hosting 2025 Kennedy Center Honors ceremony," 2025
Counterarguments and Context
Trump and his supporters argued that the Kennedy Center Honors had become politicized by the honorees and the artistic community, and that the decision to skip the ceremony was a response to the disrespect shown by participants who threatened to boycott. They contended that Trump's absence spared the ceremony from becoming a spectacle of political conflict, which they attributed to the honorees rather than to the president. Some commentators argued that attendance at cultural events is not a constitutional duty and that a president's value should be measured by policy achievements rather than ceremonial participation. It is true that the president has no legal obligation to attend the Kennedy Center Honors or any other cultural event, and that the decision of honorees to threaten boycotts contributed to the impasse. However, every prior president since the ceremony's creation participated in the tradition, and the pattern of disengagement from cultural and institutional functions during the first term represented a broader withdrawal from the nonpartisan ceremonial role that the presidency has traditionally served. The reversal in the second term does not alter the first-term record.
Author's Note
This entry is classified as Tier 5 because the assessment that missing cultural ceremonies constitutes a "norm violation" involves normative judgment about the president's institutional obligations. There is no legal requirement for presidential participation in the Kennedy Center Honors or similar events. The entry documents a factual departure from a consistent bipartisan tradition and places it in the context of a broader pattern of disengagement from institutional ceremonies and the conversion of presidential events into partisan occasions.