After facing several low approval ratings, Donald Trump hasn’t been doing any better when it comes to TV viewership, with his Kennedy Center speech providing measly figures for CBS

Charl Wright US Showbiz Reporter

04:54 ET, 26 Dec 2025

Donald Trump has suffered, yet again, another humiliating blow after it was revealed his Kennedy Center speech was the least-watched ever.

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On December 7,President Trump hosted the Kennedy Center Honors for the first time, becoming the only sitting US Head of State to have presented the gala, as opposed to watching it from the presidential box.

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During the event, he held a 12-minute monologue, which was cut to approximately two minutes on CBS’s December 23 broadcast of the event. This comes after he controversially proposed that he would be renaming the Kennedy Center to the Trump-Kennedy Center, something that has received significant backlash from critics across the board.

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On Tuesday, CBS aired footage from the ceremony, and embarrassingly for the president, preliminary ratings have shown that it attracted its lowest-ever viewership.

According to Programming Insider, the 48th Kennedy Center Honors averaged roughly 2.65 million viewers, which is a 35% drop from the 4.1 million who tuned in for the 2024 event.

Yet it’s unlikely that these measly views will change Trump’s opinions of his hosting skills, as the president bragged about his speech-giving on Truth Social.

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Taking to his social media site, the 79-year-old convicted felon boasted that "just about everybody else in America" wanted him to host the famed event, and he even joked that he would give up the presidency for this career change.

"Tell me what you think of my ‘Master of Ceremony’ abilities. If really good, would you like me to leave the presidency in order to make ‘hosting’ a full-time job?" POTUS penned on Truth Social.

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However, CBS wasn’t able to share the full speech, cutting 10 minutes of it for its program. This, in turn, meant that some of the president’s "jokes" were omitted from the broadcast.

At one point, Trump was said to have called the audience "horrible people, " telling them, "If there is one thread that connects all of these amazing artists together, it is the word ‘persistence.’ I know so many of you, and you are persistent. Many of you are miserable, horrible people. But you are persistent, you never give up. Sometimes I wish you’d give up, but you don’t."

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Vulture’s Josef Adalian spoke about the declining viewership on X, following the broadcast, calling the speech a "massacre."

"Data is wonky right now with Nielsen’s new ‘big data’ panel," Josef penned. "But in prelims, KenCen did just 2.65M. Even with a 25% lift, the show still finishes in the mid-3M range– well below last year. In demos, it’s even more of a massacre– currently at a 0.14, roughly HALF of the 2024 show."

Josef also further pointed out that when one compares this year’s figure to 2022, there has been a 49% decrease in viewership of the event’s broadcast.