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President Donald Trump managed to flub his friend and supporter Sylvester Stallone’s name while presenting him with a medallion during a Saturday evening ceremony in the Oval Office.
The ceremony—held ahead of Sunday’s Kennedy Center Honors event, which will feature tributes to each honoree as well as performances—saw the president and his handpicked honorees, including Stallone, “I Will Survive” singer Gloria Gaynor, actor Michael Crawford and rock band KISS, crowd into the Oval Office for a livestreamed presentation.
When introducing Stallone, Trump described him as “a friend of mine, a wonderful person, a really spectacular person, one of the true great movie stars there are,“ before reading out his name as “Sylvester ‘Sly’ Sallone,” omitting the t in Stallone’s surname.
Stallone did not react to the flub, which Trump repeated a second time while muttering to himself as he presented Stallone with a medallion that was designed, created and donated by Tiffany & Co.
Stallone publicly revealed himself as a supporter of the president at a gala in November 2024, after Trump had won the election.
“We are in the presence of a really mythical character,” Stallone said of Trump at the time. “I love mythology and this individual does not exist on this planet. Nobody in the world could pull off what he pulled off.”
Stallone had also been honored on Friday night with an event held at Vice President JD Vance’s residence, where Vance praised the representation Stallone’s films offered to families like his.
“If I think about why my grandmother, the woman who raised me Sly, why she loved she loved your movies so much,” Vance told attendees.
”It’s because she didn’t see people like us on the big screen that much. She saw working class people, people of humble beginnings, people who worked their asses off and made the American dream a reality, not because it was handed to them, but because they worked hard, had good support, and they got a little lucky along the way.”
Sunday’s ceremony at the Kennedy Center will be recorded and televised later in December. The president has confirmed he plans to host the event, something no president has ever done before; typically, the commander in chief sits in the audience with the honorees.
Trump said he was looking forward to the celebration, adding, “It’s going to be something that I believe, and I’m going to make a prediction: this will be the highest-rated show that they’ve ever done and they’ve gotten some pretty good ratings, but there’s nothing like what’s going to happen tomorrow night.”
