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“Do you hear the individuals sing? / Singing the music of indignant males? / It’s the music of a individuals who is not going to be slaves once more!”
When the rousing anthem of revolution stuffed the Kennedy Heart on Wednesday night time, Donald Trump might have had a Pavlovian response alongside the traces of “Get me Stephen Miller” or “Ship within the marines”. We’ll by no means know.
The tuxedo-clad US president had stood on a purple carpet, accompanied by first woman Melania in a protracted black costume, promising a “golden period” for America earlier than attending the musical Les Misérables, which interprets as The Depressing Ones or The Wretched.
The story of Les Mis is impressed by the June Rise up, an 1832 rebellion by republicans in opposition to the authoritarianism of a newly established French king. Nobody is anticipating a replay from Republicans in June 2025.
Characters embrace Jean Valjean, who’s imprisoned for stealing a loaf of bread then seeks redemption, and Inspector Javert, who’s obsessive about legislation and order and hunts Valjean with out mercy. One reporter requested Trump whether or not he identifies extra with Valjean or Javert.
“Oh, that’s a tricky one,” chuckled the wannabe strongman who despatched troops to crush immigration protests in Los Angeles and is about to stage a tank parade on his birthday. “You higher reply that one, honey,” he deflected to Melania. “I don’t know.”
It was Trump’s first manufacturing on the Kennedy Heart, the performing arts advanced the place he pulled a Viktor Orbán and seized management in February. He pushed out the centre’s former chair, fired its longtime president and pledged to overtake an establishment that he criticized as too woke.
However ticket gross sales have fallen since and a few performers have cancelled reveals. On Wednesday, as he took his seat, 78-year-old Trump was greeted with a high-octane mixture of cheers and boos that stopped after a spherical of “USA” chants.
A number of drag queens in full regalia sat within the viewers, presumably in response to Trump’s criticism of the venue for internet hosting drag reveals. One particular person shouted “Viva Los Angeles!” as Trump stepped out of the presidential field on the intermission.
The president’s look was meant to spice up fundraising for the Kennedy Heart and he mentioned donors raised greater than $10m. However Maga’s efforts to interrupt into the thespian world went about in addition to Napoleon’s invasion of Russia.
Purple carpet arrivals for the present have been a far cry from the glamour of Cannes, Hollywood or London’s West Finish. As a substitute of crowds of followers clamouring for autographs and selfies, Trump and his allies walked via an eerily abandoned Corridor of Nations and seemed not sure whether or not to reply questions yelled by the media.
Those that did revelled in cultural ignorance. First got here Corey Lewandowski, a former Trump marketing campaign supervisor who has confronted allegations of sexual harassment. He mentioned: “What’s wonderful is, out of all of the years I’ve been in Washington DC, I’ve by no means been on this constructing.”
JD Vance, the vice-president, walked the purple carpet with spouse Usha, now on the Kennedy Heart’s board of trustees, and denied that Trump had staged a “hostile takeover”. He then tweeted: “About to see Les Miserables with POTUS on the Kennedy Heart. Me to Usha: so what’s this about? A barber who kills individuals? Usha; [hysterical laughter].”
Accompanied by his spouse, the actor Cheryl Hines, Robert F Kennedy Jr recalled how his uncle, President John F Kennedy – whose big bust looms within the atrium – used to say the Greeks have been remembered for his or her structure, sculpture, performs and poetry. “A civilisation finally is judged based mostly upon its tradition and its artwork. He needed to be sure that American civilisation could be judged by that and President Trump shares that imaginative and prescient.”
Trump spent final Saturday night time with Mike Tyson watching individuals beat the hell out of one another behind a chain-link fence within the Final Combating Championship, which is sort of presumably how American civilisation will truly be judged.
Certainly, on his watch, the Kennedy Heart not feels very Kennedy-esque. The environment is totally different from the times when Democrats Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi glided in for the annual Kennedy Heart Honors. Framed portraits of the Trumps and the Vances are mounted on a marble wall and, on Wednesday, have been bathed in holy gentle. Washington is now a metropolis underneath occupation.
The president, who reportedly as soon as derided “shithole international locations” in Africa, walked in beneath nationwide flags that embrace Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe and previous the opera home stage door. His impromptu press convention was a surreal mixture of theatre and geopolitics, veering from his favorite musicals one second to the prospect of Center East battle the following.
“I like Les Mis,” Trump mentioned. “We’ve seen it many instances. We like it. Considered one of my favourites.” He was untroubled by reviews that understudies might carry out as a result of boycotts by forged members. “I couldn’t care much less,” he mentioned. “Actually, I couldn’t. All I do is run the nation effectively.”
Then on Iran: “They will’t have a nuclear weapon. Quite simple. They will’t have a nuclear weapon. We’re not going to permit that.”
Then again to showbiz. Brian Glenn of Actual America’s Voice, who’s congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene’s boyfriend, proclaimed: “Mr President, we’re making theatre nice once more, aren’t we tonight?… You’re bringing class again. The golden period of theatre!”
Trump lapped it up as a cat does milk. “And we now have a golden period right here within the nation,” he mentioned. “We’re bringing the nation again quick and I’m very proud to have helped Los Angeles survive. Los Angeles proper now, if we didn’t do what we did, could be burning to the bottom.”
Glenn wasn’t executed. “You’re a New Yorker. You’ve been to 1,000,000 theatres. Do you bear in mind your first theatre manufacturing that you simply attended?”
Trump seemed pensive, as if mulling over numerous nights absorbing the works of Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco, Tom Stoppard, Tennessee Williams and August Wilson. “A very long time in the past,” he mused. “I might say possibly it was Cats.”
Glenn put the identical query to Melania, who had held Trump’s hand whereas sustaining a sphinx-like expression. She cited The Phantom of the Opera, which should have been music to the ears of man whose cultural hinterland runs the gamut from 1980 to 1989.
However on the night time that Maga stormed America’s citadel of tradition, one man was nowhere to be seen. Elon Musk’s banishment continues regardless of his latest makes an attempt to finish his feud with the president. Maybe the tech bro was on the market someplace within the gloomy streets of Washington, channelling Les Mis’s Éponine:
By myself
Pretending he’s beside me
On their lonesome
I stroll with him ‘til morning
… With out me
His world will go on turning
A world that’s filled with happiness
That I’ve by no means recognized
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