President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance will attend the opening night of “Les Misérables” at the Kennedy Center on June 11, the White House confirmed to The Epoch Times on June 4.
Fox News first reported the upcoming appearance.
The play, based on the 1862 book written by Victor Hugo, is about Jean Valjean, an ex-offender in 19th-century France who is being pursued by an inspector despite trying to better himself. Its theme is the ability to rehabilitate oneself.
“I love the songs, I love the play,” Trump told Fox News Digital on June 3. “I think it’s great—we may extend it.”
“The Kennedy Center is coming back,” he added. “It was not properly taken care of, and we are taking it back, and we are going to turn it back into something great.”
The opening night of Les Misérables has been sold out, according to the Kennedy Center’s website. It runs at the Kennedy Center through July 13.
The Trump administration has taken over the Washington performing arts institution, with its board now led by Trump and his appointees. The president succeeded billionaire philanthropist and Carlyle Group co-founder David Rubenstein as the new chair.
Board members include Second Lady Usha Vance, Attorney General Pam Bondi, singer Lee Greenwood, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Allison Lutnick—Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick’s wife—White House Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino, and Fox News anchors Laura Ingraham and Maria Bartiromo.
Ric Grenell, the special presidential envoy for special missions, serves as the president of the Kennedy Center, which Trump has called an “American Jewel.”
The Kennedy Center “should be the premier center in the nation’s capital for the arts,” Grenell told The Epoch Times on Feb. 20.
He said the institution has faced “a lot of problems.”
“The woman who was the president before me was getting paid $1.3 million a year; she had zero cash on hand and zero in reserves,” he said, referring to Deborah Rutter, who was the president of the performing arts center, which Grenell said is “in really dire shape.”
“It’s a local institution, but it’s America’s arts center, so people come from around the country to see shows, and so I don’t know how we benefit at all from canceling shows and affecting economic development … So when you say you want to have a beautiful capital like we do, you can’t also undercut the ways that we have a beautiful capital. And so we have to support the arts,” District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser said at the National Press Club on Feb. 21.
The Kennedy Center has canceled events surrounding World Pride, which is being hosted this year in Washington.
Jan Jekielek contributed to this report.
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