Trump Probably Stuck With MAGA Knock Off Productions Of Favorite Broadway Shows

'Beyond the barricade, is there a world you long to see?'

Donald Trump has as much respect for the arts as he does American democracy. His administration has withdrawn hundreds of previously approved grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, yet within the same week the Washington Post ran a piece with the headline, “Trump’s Broadway dreams get second act with Kennedy Center takeover.”

I’m not entirely convinced Trump’s nervous system is complex enough to literally dream. The Post seemingly ignores that Trump seized control of the Kennedy Center and yanked NEA funding to advance his own propagandist agenda, which is common in fascist regimes. He’s not a former theatre kid with a dream, unless that “dream” is forcing himself into spaces where he knows he’s not welcome. He started (and mostly succeeded) with politics and now he’s moved onto the arts.

Not long after he took office again, Trump removed the Democratic members of the Kennedy Center’s board, replaced the president, and named himself as chair. This was not normal behavior, and Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda and the show’s lead producer, Jeffrey Seller, announced that they were cancelling a planned performance next year in honor of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Although Miranda gave King George one of Hamilton’s most memorable songs, he’s not interested in entertaining an actual living tyrant.

“This latest action by Trump means it’s not the Kennedy Center as we knew it,” Miranda said. “The Kennedy Center was not created in this spirit, and we’re not going to be a part of it while it is the Trump Kennedy Center. We’re just not going to be part of it.”

Seller added that Trump “took away our national arts center for all of us,” which is true. Trump, who knows nothing of loyalty and whose every action betrays the ideals of our nation, later claimed that he’d “never liked Hamilton very much.”

Trump does enjoy the musical Les Misérables, if you’re willing to believe he actually sat through it. He’d even planned to exploit an upcoming performance for a fundraising grift. However, at least a dozen cast members have announced they’re boycotting any performance where Trump is present. No matter your range, it’s hard to sing lyrics about justice, redemption, and self-sacrifice to Donald Trump.

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Trump’s newly installed fascist director of the Kennedy Center, Ric Grenell, responded to the cast boycott with outright lies and crude threats.

“Any performer who isn’t professional enough to perform for patrons of all backgrounds, regardless of political affiliation, won’t be welcomed,” he said. “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. The Kennedy Center wants to be a place where people of all political stripes sit next to each other and never ask who someone voted for but instead enjoys a performance together.”

Grenell also publicly complained that Fox had hired Miranda as guest mentor on American Idol. He’s trying to create a MAGA blacklist for performers who won’t submit to Trump’s will.

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Obviously, the Les Misérables cast members aren’t refusing to perform for Republicans, but even if they were, this is the sort of “sincerely held belief” that Republicans have normally defended when supposed Christians have refused service to LGBTQ Americans.

In 2023, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Colorado graphic designer Lorie Smith who refused to create wedding websites for same-sex couples. Smith claimed this would somehow violate her Christian faith. Judge Neil Gorsuch wrote in his majority opinion, “The First Amendment envisions the United States as a rich and complex place where all persons are free to think and speak as they wish, not as the government demands.”

Gorsuch’s wording was needlessly hyperbolic in the Colorado case, but it’s ironically relevant now, in light of Trump’s ongoing attacks on the arts. The federal government now demands that art meets Trump’s limited, restrictive standards. He’s preemptively banned any productions from the Kennedy Center that he deems “ANTI-AMERICAN.” Trump is a more stupid and malicious version of the Emperor in Amadeus who told Mozart that his symphony contained “too many notes.” (Watch below.)

Trump is especially hostile to any artistic notes that might expand hearts and minds. He previously declared that the Kennedy Center would stage what he called “non-woke” musicals, such as Cats, Fiddler on the Roof, and Phantom of the Opera. Those works are all pretty “woke” in their way, though it’s not surprising that Trump missed this, considering that he somehow believes the musical Cats contains a song literally called “Cats.”

“So we’re sitting there and then all of a sudden the lights go on and you see these people moving so incredibly, like nobody can move except a professional dancer,” Trump told the Kennedy Center board. “And anyway, then Betty Buckley gets up and sings ‘Cats.’ And the place went crazy.”

The song Betty Buckley sings as Grizabella in Cats is called “Memory.” (Watch below.)

Trump wondered if Buckley were still alive, even though she’s younger than he is: “She had the best voice.” (It’s still damn good.) “Of all the great voices and stars, bigger stars than her, she had the best voice.” Obviously, Trump is terrible at compliments.

Not surprisingly, Buckley hates Trump. She told The Advocate in 2019 about a Thanksgiving dinner when her friends revealed themselves as Trump supporters.

“They set this mug, this ‘Drumpf’ mug — I won’t even say his name — at my place at this beautifully decorated house in this beautiful, appointed Thanksgiving feast, gorgeous table. It was this ugly MAGA mug,” Buckley said. “I was like, are you kidding me? I just pushed it aside and put it somewhere else and sat down and pretended that nothing happened. And they were all watching me, like I was some kind of alien creature that they had never seen before. Never again. I feel bad about that, because I love these people. I still love them, but I can’t, I just can’t.”

During Trump’s first nightmare term, living legend Patti LuPone famously refused to perform in 2017’s War Paint if Trump showed up because “I hate the motherfucker.” This should’ve officially ended Trump’s Broadway “dreams.”

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Of course, no one is actually denying service to Trump. He can still see Les Misérables just with the understudies to the understudies. Some of them are probably quite brilliant.

Gay people offend Christian evangelicals like Lorie Smith simply by existing. They haven’t actually done anything to them personally, but Trump is actively hostile to the LGBTQ community, without whom there is no theatre, just Lara Trump singing “Memory” in empty concert halls.

The Trump administration has cancelled more than $800 million in LGBTQ health grants. The administration revoked funding for the Obie award-winning National Queer Theater in Brooklyn because its work does not “align” with Trump’s priorities. Trump won’t even acknowledge Pride Month this year. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said, “President Trump doesn’t feel as though spending $200 million on festivals and parades for what amounts to less than 7 percent of the population makes any sense.”

During oral arguments for the Lori Smith website case, Justice Samuel Alito asked if a Black mall Santa should have to pose for a photo with a child dressed in Klu Klux Klan robes. It was an absurd hypothetical, but apparently Ric Grenell would demand that the non-Megyn Kelly approved Santa smile for the camera.

Trump is sending immigrants to Salvadoran prisons and seeking to erase queer people from public life, yet Grenell has the gall to criticize Lin Manuel-Miranda and the Les Misérables cast members for not entertaining the mad MAGA king. He even accused the great Harvey Fierstein of “intolerance” for rejecting Trump’s jacklegged Kennedy Center even though Trump specifically plastered a NO DRAG QUEENS ALLOWED sign on the front door. (Fierstein has won a Tony for Torch Song Trilogy, La Cage aux Folles, and Hairspray, which all feature drag performances.)

This is emblematic of the right-wing’s twisted grievance culture. They punch you in the face, and when you tell them, “I’d rather not hang out with people who punch me in the face,” they say you’re intolerant of the “punches people in the face” community.