After installing himself as chairman of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC and promising a slate of conservative programming, Trump attended his first production: Les Misérables. In addition to getting booed by an audience infiltrated by drag queens, he is now getting blasted online for completely missing the point of what he calls his favorite musical.
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On Wednesday, Trump, Melania, JD Vance and his wife were met with a mixture of boos and cheers as they took their seats in the Kennedy Center presidential box, according to NPR. Trump’s appearance at the production of Les Misérables—a musical that dramatizes the 1832 June Rebellion in which ordinary people fought against armed soldiers—took place just days after he sent 2,000 National Guards and 700 Marines to suppress peaceful protests in LA.
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After news broke that Trump and Vance would be attending the production, 10 cast members chose to sit the performance out. Audience members who no longer wanted their tickets donated them to drag queens through the group Qommittee. Several drag queens attended the production (arriving to cheers from the audience) in protest of Trump’s conservative takeover of the Kennedy Center, in which he specifically targeted drag performers.
Drag queen Tara Hoot recalled attending the production on Instagram. “Unfortunately, there were some other people there, but I think we brightened the audience as much as we possibly could,” they said.
“We had so many kind words and people come up to us tonight, it was just so delightful,” Hoot added.
As for the production itself, Les Misérables was a choice for Trump’s first show. As its title suggests (roughly translated to “the miserable ones”), Les Misérables follows marginalized people in early 19th Century France, including the formerly incarcerated Jean Valjean and sex worker Fantine, who are pushed further to the margins by an oppressive state, represented in the law-and-order obsessed police inspector Javert.
So why that musical? “I’ve seen it many times,” Trump said. “It’s one of my favorites.” All those times and apparently the plot never once sunk in.
This isn’t the first time Trump has entirely missed the point. In February, he replaced the Kennedy Center president and other officials with his own loyalists and promised on TruthSocial, “NO MORE DRAG SHOWS, OR OTHER ANTI-AMERICAN PROPAGANDA.”
Predictably failing to take the gay out of theater, the Kennedy Center’s subsequent programming has included shows with drag and LGBTQ+ characters, including Mrs Doubtfire, Chicago and Moulin Rouge.
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