The musical Hamilton has canceled its plans to perform at the Kennedy Center following President Donald Trump‘s taking over the cultural center’s leadership, and the new leadership is calling out this “publicity stunt” as an “intolerant” political move.
The musical was on the schedule to perform in March 2026 but the lead producer, Jeffrey Seller, said in a statement on Wednesday that he could not “in good conscience, participate and be a part of this new culture.”
A statement from Hamilton producer Jeffrey Seller. pic.twitter.com/yTLlrzFAHW
— Hamilton (@HamiltonMusical) March 5, 2025
“In recent weeks we have sadly seen decades of Kennedy Center neutrality be destroyed. The recent purge by the Trump Administration of both professional staff and performing arts events at or originally produced by the Kennedy Center flies in the face of everything this national cultural center represents,” Sellers said in a statement on the Hamilton musical X account.
He went on to slam the firing of the Kennedy Center President Deborah Rutter, Board Chairman David Rubenstein, and other board members.
“We are not acting against his administration, but against the partisan policies of the Kennedy Center as a result of his recent takeover,” Sellers concluded.
In February, Trump was elected to lead the Kennedy Center board, and Ambassador Richard Grenell, former Trump ambassador to Germany who currently serves as Trump’s envoy for special missions, was brought in to be his interim executive director. The Biden administration’s appointed trustees were all dismissed or they resigned.
Following the takeover, Grenell shared that he discovered that the former leadership of the Kennedy Center had left the organization in a dire financial situation.
“I was briefed today by the CFO of the Kennedy Center on its financial situation. She told me there is ZERO cash on hand. And ZERO in reserves. And the deferred maintenance is a crisis. For the past months they’ve been digging into the DEBT RESERVES,” he said on X.
Grenell responded on Wednesday to the announcement of Hamilton‘s cancellation and called it a partisan “publicity stunt.”
Let’s be clear on the facts.
Seller and @Lin_Manuel first went to the New York Times before they came to the Kennedy Center with their announcement that they can’t be in the same room with Republicans.
This is a publicity stunt that will backfire.
The Arts are for everyone -… https://t.co/K56LjofULp
— Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) March 5, 2025
“Let’s be clear on the facts. Seller and @Lin_Manuel first went to the New York Times before they came to the Kennedy Center with their announcement that they can’t be in the same room with Republicans,” he wrote on X on Wednesday.
“This is a publicity stunt that will backfire,” he stated.
“The Arts are for everyone – not just for the people who Lin likes and agrees with,” Grenell continued in a statement. “The American people need to know that @Lin_Manuel 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.”
“Americans see you, Lin,” he concluded.
Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator and star of Hamilton, has been a Democratic fundraiser and a vocal critic of President Trump. He raised money, alongside former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, for former President Joe Biden in 2024. The Broadway star also performed for President Barack Obama at the White House.
Following Trump’s inauguration, the Hamilton star performed in a Saturday Night Live sketch mocking Trump.
Some other performances have also canceled their shows at the Kennedy Center out of politics.
Actress Issa Rae of HBO’s Insecure canceled her March 16 show. The Alfred Street Baptist Church of Arlington, Virginia, dropped its annual Christmas performance out of protest of the new Trump leadership.
Last month, the new leadership at the Kennedy Center canceled the planned tour of its children’s musical Finn, a show about a young shark who loves bright colors and sparkles, and even though he’s a shark, he ponders if he might be a fish. While the Kennedy Center called the cancellation of the musical “purely financial,” there was an outcry from the LGBTQ community.
TRUMP TO MAKE CHRISTMAS GREAT AGAIN AT THE KENNEDY CENTER
“It’s an anthem for being yourself, even when that doesn’t look like what the people (or sharks) around you thought it would. And yes, every gay kid, every trans kid, every nonbinary kid has gone through a moment of saying ‘It’s time to be me.’ We wrote this for them. For ourselves, when we were kids. We would have loved a show like this,” the Finn musical said while posting one of its songs on Instagram in protest of the cancellation.
Despite these cancellations, the Kennedy Center has numerous big shows still coming to perform, including The Sound of Music, which will run from September through October 2025.
