Shocker: Donald Trump and JD Vance Totally Miss the Point of Les Misérables

Donald Trump’s anti-woke overhaul of the Kennedy Center, which began in February with the ousting of top institution brass, reached a stunningly ironic crescendo on Wednesday night. For the first time since his hostile takeover, Trump and first lady Melania attended a show: the opening-night performance of Les Misérables, entering the venue to a mix of boos and cheers from the crowd.

Based on Victor Hugo’s canonical 1862 novel, Les Misérables is a musical about disenfranchised people rising up against their government in 19th-century France. It revolves around lower-class characters who are shunned from society for stealing just to feed their families or having children outside of wedlock. In one song from the show, characters sing, mid-protest, “Now we pledge ourselves to hold this barricade.”

Trump’s presence at Les Mis came as he deployed the National Guard to Los Angeles to crack down on anti-deportation protests. In doing so, Trump has royally pissed off democratic California governor Gavin Newsom, who wrote alongside news of Trump’s Les Mis appearance: “Someone explain the plot to him.”

VP JD Vance, who was booed alongside second lady Usha Vance while attending a symphony at the Kennedy Center in March, proudly touted his facetious misreading of the musical, writing on social media: “About to see Les Miserableswith POTUS at the Kennedy Center. Me to Usha: so what’s this about? A barber who kills people? Usha; [hysterical laughter].” In a follow-up tweet explaining his wildly obvious joke, he added, “That’s apparently a different thing called Sweeney Todd.”

Trump allegedly knows a lot more about the megamusical, which, like most of his favorite pop cultural touchstones, hails from the 1980s. When announcing his third presidential run in 2022, he walked onstage to the protest anthem, “Do You Hear the People Sing?”—a song that the U.S. Army Chorus also performed at the 2025 White House Governors Ball. Meanwhile, the Obamas once bonded over their distaste for the show.

Perhaps anticipating some empty chairs at empty tables during his upcoming military parade, Trump attempted to assert himself as master of the house at the Kennedy Center. Earlier this year, he replaced the organization’s longtime board chair, billionaire David Rubenstein, and president Deborah Rutter, with appointees like Usha Vance, who was previously secretary of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra board, as well as Trump chief of staff Susie Wiles, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and Fox News hosts Laura Ingraham and Maria Bartiromo.

Many of those MAGA-verse figures were in attendance at Wednesday night’s performance, in addition to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his actor wife Cheryl Hines, as well as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Caroline Wren, Corey Lewandowski, and Kellyanne Conway, according to Politico. Others at the performance paid $2 million to hear songs of revolution, in an attempt to raise funds. Kennedy Center ticket sales have reportedly nosedived since Trump’s overhaul.

Reactions to Trump’s first attendance at the Kennedy Center were mixed. At intermission, amid some booing, one woman seated in the orchestra section started yelling: “Felon, you’re a convicted felon,” before apparently being escorted out of the building, CNN reported. Other audience members blurted out, “We love you” and cheered for Trump, who apparently pumped his fist in the air three times.

Also onsite for the occasion were four drag queens who sat below the presidential box—a repudiation of Trump’s missive to ban “drag Shows specifically targeting our youth,” as he previously wrote on Truth Social. One of the drag queens at the Kennedy Center on Wednesday, Tara Hoot, told CNN their presence in full drag was “a message of inclusivity.”

Trump had also voiced his desire to commission only “non-woke” musicals, a plan that seems foiled already considering the subject matter of Les Mis. “Trump has turned the Kennedy Center into an anti-woke arena. This musical is the most woke thing you could ever imagine,” Kathryn Grossman, a professor of French at Penn State University and Victor Hugo scholar, told Politico. “Totally woke.”

The president, who made himself chairman of the Kennedy Center despite never having seen a show there before Wednesday, dismissed reports that some of the production’s cast members boycotted the show: “I couldn’t care less,” he told reporters ahead of the performance. “Honestly, I couldn’t. All I do is run the country well.”

Richard Grenell, a member of the Trump administration who was recently appointed as the Center’s president and interim director, told CNN in a statement at the time that the venue will “no longer fund intolerance” and suggested that actors who abstain from performing in Trump’s presence should be blacklisted from the theater industry: “In fact, we think it would be important to out those vapid and intolerant artists to ensure producers know who they shouldn’t hire—and that the public knows which shows have political litmus tests to sit in the audience.”

Asked before the show whether he identified more with Jean Valjean, the ex-felon hero fighting for redemption, or Javert, the rigidly by-the-book inspector who serves as the story’s villain, Trump replied: “Oh, that’s a tough one…I don’t know.”