KISS Part of 2025 Kennedy Center Honors Class

Rumors that KISS would be included in the 2025 Kennedy Center Honors popped up online yesterday and the news was confirmed today. Each year, there are five performers or groups granted the honor during a multi-day event including a TV performance, ball, dinner and other things that rich people like.

Apparently KISS will be doing something special for the honor, so we’ll see that means I guess. The honorees all receive medallions made by Tiffany. In addition to KISS, the other honorees are actor Sylvester Stallone, singer Gloria Gaynor, actor Michael Crawford and country singer George Strait.

The Washington Post was first the report the list of possible honorees, including KISS. In breaking the confirmed news, WaPo shared this:

Perhaps most notable is that not all of the artists have supported Trump, including the face — that is, the tongue — of Kiss.

Bassist Gene Simmons, whom Trump fired during the first season of The Celebrity Apprentice, supported Trump during his first term — but soon changed his tune.

Look what that gentleman did to this country and the polarization — got all the cockroaches to rise to the top,” Simmons told Spin of Trump in 2022. Once upon a time, you were embarrassed to be publicly racist and out there with conspiracy theories. Now it’s all out in the open because he allowed it.

I don’t think he’s a Republican or a Democrat, Simmons added of the president. “He’s out for himself, any way you can get there. And in the last election, over 70 million people bought it hook, line and sinker.