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It was a night celebrating the arts, but just weeks before the beginning of a presidential election year, politics was difficult to avoid at the 46th Kennedy Center Honors.
A who’s who of Washington came together on Sunday in the nation’s capital to recognize this year’s Honorees: rapper and actor Queen Latifah, comedian Billy Crystal, opera star Renée Fleming, Bee Gees singer and songwriter Barry Gibb and singing legend Dionne Warwick.
“I had no idea you’ve done so much, and you’ve done it all in such a relatively short amount of time,” Robert De Niro, one of Hollywood’s fiercest critics of former President Donald Trump, said as he took to the stage as part of a tribute to “When Harry Met Sally” star Crystal.
“You’re only 75,” De Niro continued to Crystal, as President Joe Biden looked on from the audience, before cracking, “That means you’re just about six years away from being the perfect age to be elected president.”
Biden is 81.
The president and Jill Biden received plenty of applause after being thanked during the ceremony by Kennedy Center board chairman David Rubenstein for supporting the arts.
Biden has continued the tradition of the sitting president attending the gala. Trump declined to attend the Honors while in office, following criticism and boycott threats from some of the honorees.
In remarks at a White House reception held for this year’s group of Honors recipients ahead of the Kennedy Center event on Sunday, Biden called Crystal “the American showman with a heart of gold.”
“And he promised me he’s not going to primary me,” Biden quipped. “He could win.”
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) told ITK despite his long career on Capitol Hill, it was his first time at the Honors.
“We’re coming here for many reasons,” Schumer said, “But above all: Billy Crystal.”
Praising Crystal’s 2005 Broadway play “700 Sundays,” Schumer said, “He’s a real New Yorker.”
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) estimated it was her 30th Honors. The event and the arts, the former Speaker said, are a “unifying thing” that helps the country to “laugh together, to cry together.”
At last year’s ceremony, the lawmaker’s husband, Paul Pelosi, made his first public appearance following a violent attack at his home.
“He wanted to be here tonight — he couldn’t be. He’ll be here next year for sure,” Pelosi said of her husband.
Fleming, who’s performed at the inaugurations of former President Barack Obama and Biden, said it was “mind-blowing” to have the commander in chief there to salute her this time around.
“It’s so thrilling. If I could fly, I’d be flying right now — that’s how excited I am,” Fleming said.
“Icing on the cake, right here!” Latifah, who was born Dana Owens, exclaimed as she made her way down the red carpet ahead of the event.
“This is the most incredible honor of my life,” Gibb said during taped remarks at the White House played as part of the Honors ceremony.
“Kindness and understanding, we seem to be losing that,” Gibb said, lamenting the current climate. “We need to grab it back,” the 77-year-old “Stayin’ Alive” singer said.
“Every year, we worry, and sometimes it’s complicated. And this year, it wasn’t at all,” Kennedy Center President Deborah Rutter said of choosing the five Honors recipients.
“We knew that we wanted to celebrate hip hop,” Rutter said of this year’s event, which coincides with hip hop’s 50th anniversary.
“We actually started thinking from that perspective and built out from there,” Rutter said, calling the selection process “easy and fun.”
Other high-profile figures eyed at the ceremony: Supreme Court Justices John Roberts and Sonia Sotomayor, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D), second gentleman Doug Emhoff — who Rubenstein thanked for his “support of the fight against intolerance and antisemitism” — “Hamilton’s” Lin-Manuel Miranda, Michael Bublé, Dove Cameron, Amy Grant, Sigourney Weaver, Meg Ryan, Rita Moreno, Missy Elliott, Whoopi Goldberg, Bob Costas, Jay Leno, director Rob Reiner, Clive Davis, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), Gladys Knight, Fox News’s Bret Baier, Ariana DeBose, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), Christine Baranski, Little Big Town, Ben Platt, and Democratic Sens. Mark Warner (Va.) and Ed Markey (Mass).
The Kennedy Center Honors are set to air on CBS on Dec. 27 at 9 p.m.
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