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Credit: Disney+A strange feud is brewing in Washington, D.C., between President Donald Trump and Hamilton creator and Disney songwriter Lin-Manuel Miranda. Earlier this week, Miranda and Hamilton producer Jeff Sellers took to social media and the New York Times to announce that they canceled the show’s 2026 run at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
In the cancellation announcement, Miranda said that the Tony-Award-winning play just “wasn’t for Trump and his crowd” and that he and Sellers made this decision in response to Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Center.
In February, Trump announced that he was pushing out board chair David M. Rubenstein, owner of the Baltimore Orioles, and firing Kennedy Center President Deborah F. Rutter in order to make the Kennedy Center “Great again.” Trump also replaced several of the Board Members with loyalists.
A statement from Hamilton producer Jeffrey Seller. pic.twitter.com/yTLlrzFAHW
— Hamilton (@HamiltonMusical) March 5, 2025
Trump replaced Rubenstein with Richard Grenell, who was ambassador to Germany during his first term. He also appointed singer Lee Greenwood and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles to the board.
After Trump remade the Kennedy Center board, it voted unanimously to make him the new board chair. Shortly after this transformation, acts began pulling out of scheduled performances at the Kennedy Center.
Sellers and Miranda have decided to pull Hamilton from the Kennedy Center’s lineup. Sellers wrote on X (formerly Twitter):
Hamilton was proudly performed at the Kennedy Center in 2018 during the first Trump administration. We are not acting against his administration, but against the partisan policies of the Kennedy Center as a result of his recent takeover.
Regardless of the political climate, I have always felt at home at The Kennedy Center, and I am grateful for every person who has spent the last 50 years making it a beacon of nonpartisanship and celebration. But we cannot presently support an institution that has been forced be external forces to betray its mission as a national cultural center that fosters the free expression of art in The United States of America.
In response to Miranda and Sellers canceling Hamilton, Grenell called this a “publicity stunt.” He said:
The Arts are for everyone — not just for the people who Lin likes and agrees with. The American people need to know that Lin is intolerant of people who don’t agree with him politically. It’s clear he and Sellers don’t want Republicans going to their shows.
It’s unclear what the next step in this feud will be, as the Hamilton performance has been canceled. Will Trump and his associates seek the last word against Miranda and Sellers? That remains to be seen.