Nelly is speaking out against critics who have denounced his performance at tomorrow’s Liberty Inaugural Ball, one of three official balls celebrating Donald Trump’s return to the presidency.

The St. Louis rapper addressed the appearance during an interview with Willie D Live, downplaying the political implications of the performance and stating that he’s simply honoring the moment by showing up for the event.

“I thought you was riding with me because I put on for my city and I try to bring my city up every step of the way. I did not know you was riding with me because you thought I would ride with who you voted for. I didn’t know that,” he said. “I didn’t know I had to agree with your political choices, and I thought it was the things that you do not the things that you say should be done. If you follow what I do, this shouldn’t even be an argument. He’s the president. He won. This isn’t a campaign, this isn’t an RNC. I’m not out on a political campaign.”

He continued by likening the performance to the same sense of civic duty that American military personnel feel in defending their country. “I’m not doing this for money, I’m doing this because it’s an honor. I respect the office. It doesn’t matter who is in office,” he said. “The same way that our men and women, our brothers and sisters who protect this country, have to go to war and have to put their life on the line for whoever in office. So if they can put their life on the line for whoever in office, I can damn sure perform.”

Willie D brought up criticisms that performing for the office meant appearing in support of Trump. “More than half this country voted for Trump. If you respect the process when the process works in your favor, respect the process when it doesn’t work in your favor,” responded Nelly.

Numerous representatives for the rapper did not respond to Variety‘s earlier requests for comment.

At the Liberty Inaugural Ball, Nelly will grace the stage alongside Village People, whose classic “Y.M.C.A.” became a recurring song played during Trump’s campaign rallies. Village People released a statement earlier this week about its involvement in events surrounding Trump’s swearing-in. “We know this won’t make some of you happy to hear however we believe that music is to be performed without regard to politics,” the group wrote on Facebook. “Our song Y.M.C.A. is a global anthem that hopefully helps bring the country together after a tumultuous and divided campaign where our preferred candidate lost. Therefore, we believe it’s now time to bring the country together with music which is why VILLAGE PEOPLE will be performing at various events as part of the 2025 Inauguration of Donald J. Trump.”

While Nelly and Village People will perform at balls, Carrie Underwood, Lee Greenwood and Christopher Macchio are scheduled to perform at the inauguration itself. On Friday, Snoop Dogg, Rick Ross and Soulja Boy appeared at the Crypto Ball, eliciting divisive online reactions that pointed out previous contradictory statements by some of the rappers.

Nelly also sang a different tune about Trump, telling Page Six in 2017 that he didn’t agree with his approach as commander-in-chief. “You know the thing about Donald Trump is that I liked Donald Trump, I did, I just don’t like Donald Trump as my president,” he said. “Dude is a trip. Pre-presidency, I was cool with the Donald. Loved his hotels. I’m more or less mad at him because I can’t stay at his hotel now. You done fucked that up. And I’ve been staying there for 15 years, and now you pull this. Get it together, homie.”

Germany’s ambassador to the U.S. has warned that President-elect Donald Trump’s administration will “undermine” democratic principles with a “maximum disruption” agenda, according to a report.

Reuters reported that it viewed a confidential briefing document signed by Ambassador Andreas Michaelis that describes the incoming Trump agenda as “a redefinition of the constitutional order – maximum concentration of power with the president at the expense of Congress and the federal states.”

“Basic democratic principles and checks and balances will be largely undermined, the legislature, law enforcement and media will be robbed of their independence and misused as a political arm, Big Tech will be given co-governing power,” reads the document, which was dated Jan. 14.

Fox News Digital reached out to the Trump transition team for comment but did not immediately hear back.

TRUMP INAUGURATION: WHO IS EXPECTED TO ATTEND, AND WHO IS BOYCOTTING?

Michaelis said recent actions by Trump and billionaire tech CEO Elon Musk could lead to a “redefinition of the First Amendment.” 

“One is using lawsuits, threatening criminal prosecution and license revocation, the other is having algorithms manipulated and accounts blocked,” the document reads, per Reuters.

Musk supported Trump throughout the election, and was tapped by the president-elect to co-lead the Department of Government Efficiency. 

GERMANY ACCUSES ELON MUSK OF TRYING TO INTERFERE IN ITS NATIONAL ELECTIONS

Last month, Germany accused Musk of attempting to interfere in the country’s upcoming parliamentary elections on behalf of the country’s far-right political party, German Alternative for Germany, citing recent social media posts and a weekend op-ed doubling down on his endorsement.

Meanwhile, Michaelis even claimed that Trump could force his agenda on states using broad legal options and that “even military deployment within the country for police activities would be possible in the event of declared ‘insurrection’ and ‘invasion’.”

The 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, however, bars federal troops from participating in civilian law enforcement unless Congress overrides the federal law.

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Despite what Michaelis says in the reported document, the German foreign ministry has acknowledged Trump won the democratic election and said it will “work closely with the new U.S. administration in the interests of Germany and Europe.”

Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, Palestine – The ceasefire in Gaza was supposed to start at 8.30am (06:30 GMT). The al-Qidra family had endured 15 months of Israeli attacks. They had been displaced more than once and were living in a tent. Their relatives had been among the more than 46,900 Palestinians killed by Israel.

But the al-Qidras had survived. And they wanted to go home.

Ahmed al-Qidra packed his seven children onto a donkey cart and headed to eastern Khan Younis. It was finally safe to travel – the bombing should have stopped.

But the family did not know that the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas had been delayed. They did not know that, even in those additional few hours, Israeli aircraft were still flying over the skies of Gaza, ready to drop their bombs.

The explosion was loud. Ahmed’s wife Hanan heard it. She had stayed behind at a relative’s home in the centre of the city, organising their belongings, planning on joining her husband and children a few hours later.

“The blast felt like it hit my heart,” Hanan said. She instinctively knew that something had happened to her children, whom she had only just said goodbye to.

“My children, my children!” she screamed.

The cart had been hit. Hanan’s eldest son, 16-year-old Adly, was dead. So was her youngest, six-year-old Sama, the baby of the family.

Yasmin, 12, explained that a four-wheel drive was in front of the cart carrying people celebrating the ceasefire. Perhaps that was the reason the missile hit.

“I saw Sama and Adly lying on the ground, and my father bleeding and unconscious on the cart,” Yasmin said. She pulled her eight-year-old sister Aseel out before a second missile hit the spot where they had been. Eleven-year-old Mohammed also survived.

But Ahmed, Hanan’s partner in life, was pronounced dead in the hospital.

‘My children were my world’

Sitting on the edge of her injured daughter Iman’s hospital bed in Khan Younis’s Nasser Hospital, Hanan was still shell-shocked.

“Where was the ceasefire?” she asked. In their excitement to finally return to whatever was left of their home, the family had missed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declaring that the Palestinian group Hamas had not sent over the names of the three Israeli captives who would be released on Sunday as part of the ceasefire deal.

They had not seen Hamas explain that there were technical reasons for the delay, and that the names would be provided, as they eventually were.

They would not know that in the three-hour delay before the ceasefire eventually began, three members of their family would be killed. They were among the 19 Palestinians killed by Israel in those last few hours, according to Gaza’s Civil Defence.

Hanan broke down in tears. She would now have to face life without her husband and without two of her children. The loss of Sama, “the last of the bunch” as she described her with the Arabic saying, was particularly hard.

“Sama was my youngest and the most spoiled. She’d get angry whenever I talked about having another child.”

Adly had been her “pillar of support”. Her children were her world.

“We endured this entire war, facing the harshest conditions of displacement and bombardment,” Hanan said. “My children dealt with hunger, a lack of food and basic necessities.”

“We survived more than a year of this war, only for them to be killed in its last minutes. How can this happen?”

A day of joy had been turned into a nightmare. The family had celebrated the end of the war the night before.

“Hasn’t the Israeli army had enough of our blood and the atrocities they committed for 15 months?” Hanan asked.

Then, she thought of her future. With her husband and two of her children ripped away from her, and with tears coming down her face, she asked: “What’s left?”