A who’s who of Washington came together on Sunday in the nation’s capital to recognize this year’s Kennedy Center Honorees.
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.
