Gene Simmons’ awful press tour keeps on griftin'

Now that Donald Trump has taken over the Kennedy Center, the Kennedy Center Honors are a sham. After skipping every year’s ceremony during his first presidential term, Trump is now producing it and giving some re-designed medals to conservative-leaning celebrities—KISS, Sylvester Stallone, Gloria Gaynor, Michael Crawford, George Strait. Trying to do a Johnny Carson act (his words, not mine), Trump gave the room a class-act introduction: “If there is one thread that connects all of these amazing artists together, it is the word persistence. I can say that with a lot of members of our audience. I know so many of you. You are persistent. Many of you are miserable, horrible people. You are persistent. You never give up. Sometimes I wish you’d give up, but you don’t.”

Me personally, I wish KISS would give up. More specifically, I wish Gene Simmons would give up. I can’t remember the last time a Kennedy Center Honors recipient has milked the award like this. But, lo and behold, Simmons has been talking to anyone and everyone now that he’s got a medal around his neck, though I’m shocked he doesn’t have a crick in it yet from all that time he’s spent in Trump’s lap. Earlier this month, he glazed the president for his new East Wing ballroom, comparing it to Versailles and saying the re-design represents exactly what America needs right now: “a face lift.”

Simmons recently showed up on CNN to speak with Inside Politics’s Manu Raju, in a segment recorded before Simmons’ Senate Judiciary Committee testimony on behalf of the American Music Fairness Act, bipartisan legislation introduced to ensure artists will receive fair compensation when their songs are played on terrestrial radio stations. In his opening statement before the US Senate, Simmons compared radio stations’ refusal to pay royalties to slavery. “It looks like a small issue. There are wars going on and everything, but our emissaries to the world are Elvis and Frank Sinatra,” he said during his testimony. “When they find out we’re not treating our stars right—in other words, worse than slaves. Slaves get food and water. Elvis and Bing Crosby, and Sinatra got nothing for their performance.” His heart might be in the right place, but I’m afraid his prefrontal cortex is somewhere else entirely. He claimed that “radio stations last year made something like $14 billion. Artists who you heard on the radio stations made zero. Your favorite artist, whether it’s a classic artist or a new artist, made zero. And that is inexcusable.”