JD Vance is a Yale graduate who dressed in drag while attending law school. Yet, he purports to be unfamiliar with Les Miserables, one of the most famous musicals of all-time.
HAH!
On Wednesday evening, the president, whose longstanding love for Broadway we’ll address in a moment, and his MAGA cohort put on their best black tie attire and marched to the Kennedy Center for the opening night of a four-week run of the classic performance. They were greeted with a mixture of cheers and boos, as well as four local drag queens.
Politics, but make it gay!
Stay woke with our briefing while staying informed on all things LGBTQ+ entertainment, life, and more!
Tr*mp may have banned drag shows from the Kennedy Center, but he couldn’t stop the four queens from taking their seats towards the front of the hallowed venue.
“It was protest by taking up space,” one of the drag performers, Tara Hoot, told NPR. “We wanted to support the artists and bring attention to the drag ban at the Kennedy Center by showing up and being gorgeous.”
Mission accomplished! They looked fabulous.
When Vance attended his first show at the Kennedy Center as vice president back in March, he was greeted much less enthusiastically. But that didn’t stop him from showing up Wednesday.
Not that he knows anything about Les Mis, or plays in general, of course. Our sitting veep is a macho guy, who bros out with “manosphere” podcasters and scolds foreign leaders in the Oval Office for not saying “pwease” and “tank you.”
He would never be aware of something as girly as (checks notes) a play about hardscrabble revolutionaries who fight tyranny.
In the lead-up to the show, Vance professed his apparent ignorance on X.
As a kicker to his hilarious anecdote, which totally happened, Vance added that his wife, Usha, informed him he was thinking of a “thing called Sweeney Todd.”
A simple man from Appalachia, one can’t expect Vance to keep all of these highfalutin names straight. Les Miserables. Sweeney Todd. You might as well be speaking French to the poor guy! He’s only written a best-selling memoir and worked as a venture capitalist in San Francisco before being elected to the Senate at age-38, after all.
See? Simple!
That’s apparently a different thing called “Sweeney Todd”
— JD Vance (@JDVance) June 11, 2025
Related*
Though Vance tries to present as ruggedly masculine individual, his cringey late-age millennialism often impedes his efforts. Vance constantly posts online; but unlike his septuagenarian boss, doesn’t set the dialogue in any way.
Instead, he responds to right-wing grifters with grainy gifs (remember those)?
Vance was a trending topic Wednesday night, but probably not for the reason he was hoping. It seems that nobody believes the Ivy Leaguer who wears smoke eyeliner isn’t familiar with Les Mis.
While the notion of Vance being ignorant of Les Mis is preposterous enough on its face, his claim becomes really ridiculous once one considers his boss.
DJT is the biggest Broadway queen this side of Ethel Merman!
The almost-79-year-old loves musicals, and Les Mis in particular. In fact, he’s adopted the classic as one of his political rallying cries.
Based off an 1862 French novel by the same, Les Miserables chronicles the struggles of Jean Valjean, an impoverished Persian who was imprisoned for 19 years for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sister’s starving children. Valjean and the persecuted proletariat constantly find themselves up against the story’s villain, Inspector Javert. A class traitor, he betrays his own people and holds a strict adherence to authoritarian law.
For centuries, revolutionaries of all persuasions have seen themselves in the plot. Civil War soldiers on both sides read the book.
When Les Mis debuted on Broadway in the 1980s, the story became an international sensation.
Given that Les Mis is about the marginalized masses rising up, Tr*mp’s obsession with the production is ironic. Before Wednesday’s show, he told reporters he’s seen it “a number of times” and professed it’s “fantastic.”
“I thought it was just about our first choice. That’s what we got,” he added.
After installing himself as chairman of the Kennedy Center–and stocking its board of directors with MAGA loyalists–Tr*mp toured the theater and boasted about his Broadway acumen.
According to the New York Times, Tr*mp “polled board members on which was better: The Phantom of the Opera” or Les Miserables.“
For Vance’s sake, here’s hoping Tr*mp never poses the same question to him. He definitely wouldn’t have an answer!
Related*
Sign up for the Queerty newsletter to stay on top of the hottest stories in LGBTQ+ entertainment, politics, and culture.
