President-elect Donald Trump is notoriously thin-skinned. This is not a newly discovered personality trait that I am only now revealing. His inability to handle criticism was one of the major knocks against him during the run-up to the election. So the Hamilton Incident comes as no surprise.
Trump’s pick for vice president, Mike Pence, went to a Broadway theater to watch the play Hamilton: An American Musical. As the play ended, the actor who played Aaron Burr, Brandon Victor Dixon, thanked Pence for attending and said, “We hope you will hear us out.”
As Pence was leaving the auditorium, Dixon continued, “We, sir — we — are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents, or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights. We truly hope that this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and to work on behalf of all of us.”
The audience broke out in enthusiastic applause and cheers.
This pissed Trump off to no end, and he fired off several tweets stating that the cast of Hamilton had harassed Pence, had been rude to Pence, and owed Pence an apology.
Now, maybe they do, and maybe it’s called free speech. But I don’t think it’s about Pence at all. I think Trump took the incident as a personal criticism. The man that he, Donald Trump, had personally selected to be vice president, and by association Trump himself, had been implored to govern with better behavior than Trump had demonstrated during the long election race.
If being addressed at the end of a Broadway play is the worst thing that befalls Trump or Pence during the Trump presidency, I would call his presidency golden.
But if Trump is truly upset over this very mild and polite exhibition of free speech – upset enough to spend any time at all with public criticism of the incident – upset enough to publicly demand an apology from the “offending” actor – then Trump has, without any doubt, chosen the wrong job.
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