VIDEO : Trump Does Not Attend Kennedy Center Honors

This year's Kennedy Center Honors is a bigger one than ever before, marking the event's 40th anniversary on John F. Kennedy's 100th birthday. Yet this is also the first year in more than two decades that a president does not attend the event. President Donald Trump did not attend the event in order to allow the attendees to celebrate without "political distractions." But the opening remarks by Caroline Kennedy seemed even more political this year when she restated her father's commitment to ""the rule of law, to religious tolerance and racial justice, to nuclear disarmament and scientific innovation."