Jun.13

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GOP 53

This Week in Schadenfreude: The Miserable Ones

Frankly, we have had enough of Donald Trump for today. And so, we were planning to make this item about someone else—we had it all written up and ready to go. But then... well, you know what they say about the best laid plans of mice and men.

Put another way, the schadenfreude was so thick at the Kennedy Center on Wednesday that you could have cut it with a knife. Readers will recall that, during his first term, Trump stayed away from that venue like it was a leper colony, because he knew he would be... extremely unwelcome, to say the least. He has endeavored to remake it in his own image, by swapping out the management and canceling certain programming. Judging by events this week, it's not working out very well.

The current show at the Kennedy is Les Misérables, and Trump, First Lady Melania Trump, VP J.D. Vance, and Second Lady Usha Vance were all in attendance. We will note, for the sake of completeness, that Trump did get some cheers. However, they were limited, and somewhat muted, and the rest of the evening was pretty much a disaster on all counts. A rundown:

• There were many, many boos. They were louder than the cheers by a lot.
  
  
• Most of the regular cast refused to perform, leaving understudies to do the job. They appeared to pointedly address several songs directly to Trump.
  
  
• The First Lady looked, in photographs, like she would prefer to be anywhere else. She looked, if you will, miserables:
  
  
  
  Mrs. Trump, blink twice if you are being held against your will.
  
  
• As is often the case, Trump's tux did not fit properly. You could have made a decent-sized pup tent from the excess material in his pants.
  
  
• One of the things Trump canceled at the Kennedy Center was its regular drag shows. So, a bunch of drag queens showed up and were in the audience alongside Trump. The drag queens were cheered loudly.
  
  
• Trump was dragged mercilessly on social media for his apparent cluelessness in attending a play about people fighting back against an oppressive government.
  
  
• Vance was dragged mercilessly on social media for lame jokes in which he pretended he did not know the difference between Les Miz and Sweeney Todd. Roughly 100.0% of social media users think that a Yale grad knows full well which play is which and that, furthermore, Vance is actually trying to hide a deep and abiding love of musical theater.

Later this month, the Kennedy Center will be staging The Lion King, a play about an evil king who secured power by betraying his people and using dirty tricks against his predecessor. Maybe the blissfully unaware Trump will show up for that one, too. (Z)