Trump hosting the Kennedy Center Honors will be like watching a crappy variety show from the 1970s

Everyone says Donald Trump has turned the presidency into a reality show. I disagree. Reality shows didn’t exist in the 1970s, and Trump can’t seem to get his thoughts and sentiments out of the boogie, oogie, ogie era.

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This makes perfect sense as to why he wants to host the Kennedy Center Honors this year, and his throwback to the 1970s bunch of honorees. I suppose JD Vance will be off to the side of the stage somewhere, and bellow, “Heeeeerrrreeee’s Donnie!”

Based on Trump’s performance yesterday at the Kennedy Center, and his increasing desire to turn American society and culture back 50 years, Trump’s spiritual home is the 1970s, and don’t even get me started on Trump’s infatuation with “Y.M.C.A.,: a song he loves because it has everything for young men to enjoy.

The 1970s was when Trump began to disco dance his way into New York City society and club life. Juking around Studio 54 when he had nary a worry. He had his father’s money, still had hair, was single, and could act like a spoiled brat with a bone spur, and get away with it.

Come to think of it, things haven’t really changed for Trump except his hair now looks like a gone-wrong shag cut from 1976. And with his ill-tempered child ignorance, he treats policy like a “What you talkin’ about Willis?” moment, while he tells judges, Democrats, and Taylor Swift to “Kiss his grits.”

If you think about it, his presidency is really a mash-up of whack-a-mole 1970s game shows and cheesy variety specials. Where a cast of wildly wacky characters parade through the Oval Office, all vying not to be gonged. Vance, Elon Musk, Conor McGregor, El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, Tim Cook, Vince Vaughn, Kristi Noem, et al.

These aren’t reality show characters. These personalities are contestants who come to audition for Trump’s caravan of players. Trump is less “Commander-in-Chief” and more “Ringmaster-in-Chief.”

And when he sets foot on the Kennedy Center stage to introduce and fete the time-capsuled honorees, he’ll be presiding over the cultural equivalent of a 1970s variety show. His guests? A-listers from the 1970s who barely earn a blip on the cultural radar of the 2020s.

Trump’s honoree list reads like the Billboard chart from 1978: George Strait, KISS, and Gloria Gaynor. Further, when he unveiled Sylvester Stallone as one of his choices, all he talked about was Stallone’s experience with Rocky back in 1976. Trump says he was 98 percent involved with who would be selected, of course.

And when discussing Michael Crawford, Trump said he was at Crawford's first Broadway performance in 1967. He probably limped to the theater because of those bone spurs on his foot.

Trump is also fixated on Gaynor’s 1978 hit, “I Will Survive.” If you listen to the lyrics, it sounds more fitting for someone like Trump’s second wife, Marla Maples, than it does for Trump:

Go on, go, walk out the door
Turn around now
You’re not welcome anymore

But Donnie would just shrug because he believes women are so beneath him. “Stifle yourself,” he probably said to Marla. Trump's 1970s was when women suffered in silence as men cheated on them, harassed them, and vilified them, with men suffering no consequences. That was, as Trump might say, “Such a perfect time.”

Now, to Trump, all women are woke.

He promises the show “won’t be woke,” which is MAGA parlance for no diversity. Trump will undoubtedly point Gaynor out in the audience and bark some racist thing, in addition to some version of saying women and Black people love him.

Conversely, you can be sure the stage will be stacked with mostly white, straight, cisgender, mostly male icons from a time when queer people stayed in the closet and systemic racism wasn’t up for discussion.

For Trump, that’s the good stuff. The “great culture.” The good old days: When the Harvey Weinsteins of the world went unpunished, when Harvey Milk was an outlier, and when radio broadcaster Paul Harvey went on racist rants.

Now, do you see why Trump loves the 1970s? Also, in the 70s, the Nielsen ratings were the most coveted data on earth. They even beat out bad job reports from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Thank God, or I mean Trump, we won’t have to worry about job numbers anymore.

But Trump still worries about TV ratings. The only numbers that still matter to Trump. How many times does he boast and lie about The Apprentice being the number one show, and the “woke” and “boring” Oscars’ bad ratings?

Truth be told, the Kennedy Center Honors, like all award shows, has been limping along in the viewership department. But in his mind, Trump is the guy who can bring it back.

That’s how I imagine Trump on stage hosting the show, like a ‘70s game show host. With a phony grin like Wink Martindale on Tic-Tac-Dough, introducing honorees like Monty Hall on Let’s Make a Deal, “what’s behind door number one, door number two…,” and repulsively kissing women on the lips like Richard Dawson on Family Feud.

It’s not that Trump is out of touch with pop culture. It’s that he’s out of touch with this century’s pop culture. It’s glaringly apparent that for him, the 1970s never ended. Trump might even show up for the taping of the Kennedy Center Honors in a 1970s leisure suit, replete with long sideburns and platform shoes.

If you put it all together, we’ve been living inside Trump’s reboot of The Gong Show. It not only makes sense with the roster of amateur players around him, but host Chuck Barris was known to be bizarre, disheveled, and to slur his words. Sound familiar?

Now, as host of the Kennedy Center Honors, Trump finally gets to go full Barris. He will mug for the cameras, ramble incoherently rather than read his teleprompter, and most assuredly start slurring his words by the end of the evening.

And, when the whole thing inevitably collapses into chaos, Trump will reach for that giant mallet and slam the gong, underscoring that by hosting the event, he is eroding presidential dignity.

If Trump has his way, America won’t just be stuck in the ’70s for one hokey night at the Kennedy Center. We’ll be trapped there for the next three years, living in the horror show of Trump’s dictatorship.

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