Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images
Donald Trump loves musicals, and Les Misérables is a particular favorite. He caused a stir when he attended the Broadway production with Marla Maples in 1993 shortly after his split from Ivana Trump, he often plays music from the show during his DJ sets at Mar-a-Lago, and the U.S. Army Chorus performed “Do You Hear the People Sing?” for Trump at the 2025 White House Governors Ball.
There’s always a lot of discourse when people are reminded of the president’s passion for Les Mis. Do the musical’s MAGA fans know that Victor Hugo, who wrote the 1862 novel the show is based on, passionately opposed authoritarian leaders? Or that the songs from the musical are a staple at protests around the globe? Do Trump supporters think they’re the scrappy revolutionaries at the center of the story? Or do they see themselves as “law and order” Javert types, since the rebels in the anti-monarchist June Rebellion of 1832 didn’t actually win?
Judging from Trump’s remarks while attending the show’s opening performance at the Kennedy Center on Wednesday night, we’re all overthinking this.
“I love Les Mis, I have seen it many times,” the president said while walking the red carpet. “One of my favorites.”
Yet when asked, “Do you identify more with Jean Valjean or Javert?” Trump was completely stumped.
“Oh, that’s a tough one, that last part of that question,” he said. “That’s tough, I think.”
The president asked the First Lady for a lifeline, saying, “You’d better answer that one, honey. I don’t know.” Unsurprisingly, Melania just smiled.
Could Trump have dodged because he knows the correct answer is Jean Valjean, the moral “criminal” who steals to feed his starving family and winds up trapped in an unjust carceral system, but he’s actually rooting for Inspector Javert, a cop with a total lack of empathy for criminals who melts down and destroys himself when he realizes his rigid authoritarian worldview is wrong? Sure, that’s a possibility.
But knowing what we do about Trump, it’s far more likely that despite seeing Les Mis many times he’s given absolutely no thought to its message or even basic elements of the plot. He just thinks “Do You Hear the People Sing?” is a banger.
Of course, Trump’s not wrong on that point. And his failure to answer a basic Les Mis question actually wasn’t the worse thing a White House official said about the show yesterday. That award goes to Vice President J.D. Vance, who tried to pretend he’s too manly and uncultured to even know what Les Mis is about by making a Sweeney Todd reference.
