WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump hosted the annual Kennedy Center Honors on Sunday, praising Sylvester Stallone, Kiss, Gloria Gaynor and the other honorees as being “legendary in so many ways.”

“Billions and billions of people have watched them over the years,” Trump, the first president to command the stage instead of sitting in an Opera House box, said to open the show.

He said the honorees, who also include country music superstar George Strait and Tony Award-winning actor Michael Crawford, are “among the greatest artists and actors, performers, musicians, singers, songwriters ever to walk the face of the Earth.”

Since returning to office in January, Trump has made the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, which is named after a Democratic predecessor, a touchstone in a broader attack against what he has lambasted as “woke” anti-American culture.

Trump, who said in August that he had agreed to host the show, said Saturday at a State Department dinner for the honorees that he was doing so “at the request of a certain television network.”

He predicted the broadcast, scheduled to air Dec. 23 on CBS and Paramount+, would have its best ratings ever.