What began as a discussion about President Donald Trump’s unprecedented takeover of the Kennedy Center Honors unraveled into a live-television free-for-all on CNN, veering in minutes from arts programming to slavery, white supremacy, and transgender athletes.

On NewsNight, host Abby Phillip opened with the news that Trump had not only handpicked the 2025 honorees, boasting he was “98 percent involved,” but would also host the televised ceremony, a sharp break from decades of tradition in which presidents have sat in the balcony as spectators. “Usually when the honorees are announced, you don’t see the president doing a press conference at the Kennedy Center,” Phillip said. “It’s not a political thing. It’s a celebration of American art.”

U.S. Rep. Ritchie Torres, a gay New York Democrat, called the move “the opposite of the Oprah effect,” accusing Trump of “poisoning what is an iconic and historically bipartisan institution.” Democratic strategist Julie Roginsky went further, saying it was part of a larger cultural campaign: “He’s literally reviewing parts of American history… to make sure it comports with dear leader and what MAGA wants.” Earlier in the week, the Trump administration instructed the Smithsonian to conduct a review of its content and make “corrections” to exhibits that didn’t comply with Trump’s vision of American excellence.

That’s when Jillian Michaels, the lesbian fitness personality who wrote that she was not proud to be LGBTQ+ in a June Daily Mail Pride Month op-ed that railed against “leather daddies, drag shows, and corporate stunts,” jumped in. “Can we address some of those things that are in there? Because have you looked at some of the things that are being reviewed?” she asked.

“Yes. Slavery,” Roginsky replied.

“He’s not whitewashing slavery,” Michaels shot back. “And you cannot tie imperialism and racism and slavery to just one race, which is pretty much what every single exhibit does.”

Torres countered: “Slavery in America was white supremacy.”

“Less than 2 percent of white Americans owned slaves,” Michaels replied, adding that Americans were “the first race to try to end slavery.” Phillip pressed her on whether she was disputing that slavery in the United States was about race. “Every single thing is like, ‘white people bad,’ and that’s just not the truth,” Michaels insisted, citing a Cuban migration exhibit she claimed was framed that way.

Then, abruptly, Michaels pivoted to the Smithsonian’s Change Your Game exhibit, a family-friendly installation about sports innovation, to argue against transgender athletes in women’s sports. She dismissed the exhibit’s discussion of gender testing as “complex,” calling it “basic science… XX chromosome, XY chromosome.”

“Do you know that when you walk in the front door, the first thing that you see is the gay flag?” Michaels had complained earlier in the segment.

“First of all, we don’t have time to litigate all of this,” Phillip interjected.

“Of course we don’t,” Michaels replied, accusing Phillip of “trying to racialize” her comments.

“Just to be clear, you brought up race,” Phillip said. “This was a conversation about the arts, and you brought up slavery and the question of whether it was about race. The answer is yes. Slavery in the United States is about race.”

Axios media reporter Sara Fisher eventually steered the conversation back to the Kennedy Center, noting that while Trump’s honoree list wasn’t “the most MAGA ceremony ever,” his decision to host and his allies’ moves to rename the venue marked a new phase in politicizing an institution once considered above the partisan fray.