“We Will Make Broadway Great Again with a Taxpayer-Funded Revival of Cats!” – Donald Trump Issues a New Executive Order
Next up is a big one! One that more and more people have been asking about for a very long time. I was in New York at a meeting of the Broadway League held at the White House just a few days ago. One of them walked up to me and said, “Sir, Broadway ticket sales are a disaster! Can’t you do something?!” Well, I’m pleased to announce that through this executive order, we will be opening a big, beautiful revival of the dated, critically maligned classic Cats on the New York stage very soon!
As some of you may know, I worship at the altar of pretentious, aesthetically unappealing eighties stage musicals. Cats is a show that is very near and dear to my heart. So much so, that my aides have the job of following me around and playing “Memory” aloud to quell my many childish temper tantrums at any given moment. Contemporary shows like Hamilton and Angels in America are turning audiences away with DEI, woke agendas, and an uncomfortably accurate portrayal of my mentor, the late, great Roy Cohn in the latter. This revival will put the “White” back in the “Great White Way,” even if the races of the actors will be virtually indistinguishable at a distance and under layers of makeup and faux fur-lined unitards.
Instead of pouring your tax dollars into practical solutions for inflation and its effect on the overall cost of living, I’ve decided to bring back a show that bewilders its audience with hollow spectacle and a practically non-existent plot. It’s the ideal antidote for the deep divisions caused by Democrats and their radical socialist agenda. With the forthcoming elimination of the National Endowment for the Arts, the Department of Education, and public libraries, we’ll have plenty of cash to produce this inexplicably popular train wreck and still have enough left for Vegas-style residencies for both Lee Greenwood and Kid Rock at the Majestic Theatre! That venue has been unoccupied since the closure of The Phantom of the Opera during the failed Biden Administration. Sad! As for the steep ticket prices that have kept many Americans away from the theatre for decades, that’s something we’ll be looking at very closely. It’s very difficult to bring prices down, but a historically slim majority of American voters seem to think I can. We’ll see!
Audiences are abandoning Broadway now in a way that is unprecedented! It’s like no other point in American history! Except, of course, for the Great Depression, 9/11, the 2008 financial collapse and the COVID-19 pandemic. That last one brought the entire live entertainment industry, including film and television, to a screeching halt for the better part of two years. Leave it to the China Virus to stifle our ingenuity! If anything is indicative of American exceptionalism, it’s Cats, a show created by English composer Andrew Lloyd Webber that premiered on London’s West End before coming to the States.
We have concepts of a plan for other revivals too! We may do Les Miserables with cameo appearances by the January 6th insurrectionists to whom I granted sweeping, unconditional pardons. Advance sales for this revival, which I just announced three or four minutes ago, are already breaking records! So come and see Cats, America! It’s the type of pandering performance art that poses no threat to convention or the status quo. I am more than happy to distract you with it in the same vein as jingling keys before an infant while I continue to undo your fundamental rights with the stroke of a Sharpie marker. Enjoy!