Tom Cruise reportedly too busy to receive Kennedy Center Honor from Trump

There is, of course, the matter of the ceremony’s host—self-appointed Kennedy Center chairman Donald Trump. Cruise has remained largely tight-lipped on the country’s current political hellscape. He even dodged a question about his favorite topic—movies—at a Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning press conference earlier this year, per Variety. When a reporter asked the actor to comment on Trump’s proposed movie tariffs, Cruise responded by saying that  “we’d rather answer questions about the movie.” 

The final honoree list, all of whom apparently had some free time on their calendar, includes Kiss, Michael Crawford, George Strait, Sylvester Stallone, and Gloria Gaynor. It does not include Trump himself, although the president did say, “Next year we’ll honor Trump, okay?” after whining about how he’d never gotten the offer before. He presumably does have this type of power, as he said he was “about 98% involved” in the selection of this year’s honorees.

The president also made a big show of saying how much he really didn’t want to host the Honors before announcing that he was taking one for the team and doing it anyway at his unveiling of the honoree class yesterday. Not everyone was so unenthusiastic about his role as emcee, however. In a guest monologue on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, comedian Nicole Byer said she was actually glad Trump was hosting the ceremony. “Let him host the Emmys, the Grammys, a podcast with Theo Von. He could be the host out of Applebee’s!” she elaborated. “Anything that distracts him from running this country into the ground.”