By the time the curtain fell on Les Misérables, the performance onstage felt almost secondary to the drama unfolding in the aisles and online. Trump’s three-pump fist to the crowd, the dueling chants of “U.S.A.” and jeers, and the quiet absence of cast members who chose to sit out all fused into a single, uneasy tableau. The Kennedy Center, freshly reshaped by a conservative leadership overhaul, became less a neutral arts venue and more a contested symbol of cultural power.
In that light, Trump’s boast of raising more than $10 million was not just a fundraising headline but a declaration: this space, too, could be remade in his image. Yet the irony was impossible to ignore—a president facing criticism for deploying federal forces to quash protests spending the evening with a musical about the poor rising up against the state. Outside, a meme of him clutching only Melania’s thumb raced across social media, proof that even the smallest gestures now carry outsized meaning. In the end, the night worked like theater at its best: everyone saw the same show, but each audience left with a different story.
