According to NPR’s Peter Overby, who happened to be watching the show in New York City Friday evening with his family, Pence’s presence seemed to punctuate some of the lines in the Tony award-winning musical about founding father Alexander Hamilton, who rose from being a bastard, orphan immigrant to America’s first Treasury secretary.
“His presence also seemed to provoke an especially strong ovation at the line ‘Immigrants, we get the job done,'” Overby noted of the exchange between Hamilton and the Marquis de Lafayette at the beginning of the song “Yorktown,”about the final major battle of the American Revolution.
Overby also reported that the song “What Comes Next,” sung by King George III postulating about the challenges America faces after an unlikely victory, also provoked cheers and applause that stopped the show during the lines “It’s much harder when it’s all your call” and “When your people say they hate you, don’t come crawling back to me.”
The acclaimed politically-themed musical has been used as fodder for much of the campaign, with politicians and celebrities regularly attending. Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton saw the show several times and the cast also performed the show as a fundraiser for her campaign. Miranda also performed at a Broadway fundraiser for Clinton’s campaign just weeks before the election. President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama are huge fans of the rap and hip-hop inspired musical as well; they introduced it at this past summer’s Tony Awards, where it won 11 awards, and also had the cast at the White House to perform for high school students.
President-elect Donald Trump was less than impressed with the reaction from the crowd and the cast of Hamilton toward his running mate, claiming that the vice president-elect had been “harass[ed]” and demanded that Pence get an apology. Several times throughout the campaign, when Trump offended the gold star Khan family and a disabled reporter, he never apologized.
Dixon responded to Trump in a tweet, and once again thanked Pence for listening.
