LL Cool J Is Grateful Trump Won't Attend the Kennedy Center Honors and Calls for 'Spiritual' Unity

The rapper and television personality told Ellen DeGeneres on her daytime talk show Friday that Trump's presence would have changed the tone of the experience and removed the focus from what the event truly was about.

"I'm glad I can just go out there and it's about the music and the culture and not about a bunch of politics," Cool J said.

Cool J is being honored as the first hip-hop artist recipient, and doesn't plan on making any political statements himself.

"Nobody hired me to be their political activist savior," Cool J said. "I'm just going to focus on the music, focus on hip-hop. That's what I'm there for. I'm not feeding into that. I'm not feeding the machine."

Cool J then launched into a stirring call for unity, stressing the importance of being able to trust the nation's leaders and see love in one another.

"I think that the only place where we can really connect is spiritually," Cool J said. "You know, it's about — I'm not talking about inaction, I'm not talking about empty prayer, but I'm saying we need to connect on a spiritual level as a nation and get to know each other again."

Cool J used another terrible time in American history, 9/11, as proof that we can unite under stressful circumstances.

"When you looked in my eyes and I looked in your eyes we knew that we were part of the same country," Cool J said. "And somewhere along the line we kind of forgotten about that and got into this kind of guerrilla approach to politics."

"This divide that's been created is actually absurd because we're one country and you know what, if some foreign boots hit the ground you'd be surprised how quickly we'd all be friends again," Cool J said.

"But we just have to remember that this is one country and the thing about America is that – the difference between America and a lot of other places is that we come from all over the world here," Cool J said. "America is a melting pot. Some of us ended up here because of different reasons, different circumstances. I get all of that, but at the end of the day, we are all in this one American fish tank together. So, I think we need to remember that."

In a possible reference to climate change, DeGeneres added that it's no longer just enough to be united as a nation either, it's time to unite as a world.

“I will add that we are one planet. We are one world,” DeGeneres said. “And we need to understand that we cannot mess around with this world. This is the only place that we all have to live.”