Theater Nerd Takes Trump Blame Game To Delusional Level

Liberals conceive of President Donald Trump as a figure of mythological might. With a flick of a malevolent finger, he sends floods to Texas. With another flick, he tears our sacred democracy asunder. The left’s latest Trump-attributed ill may be their most creative yet.

“Metropolitan Opera season attendance dropped slightly following the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown that coincided with a decrease in tourists to New York,” the Associated Press (AP) begins their report. 

Of all the industries that might’ve been bruised by deporting illegal aliens, the performing arts were not top of mind. (RELATED: America’s Migrant Crisis Summed Up In One Preventable Tragedy)

“We were on track to continue to improve,” Met general manager Peter Gelb said, according to the AP. “We were disappointed by the sales in the last two months of the season — our projections were much higher and I attribute the fact that we didn’t achieve our sales goals to a significant drop in tourism.” The outlet doesn’t push back on Gelb’s framing. International ticket sales amounted to just 11% of sales for the opera, they write, falling short of the Met’s projected 16%. 

Attendance is down at the Metropolitan Opera in NYC (one of the country’s top arts institutions) and the CEO blames Trump’s “immigration crackdown.”

This is how you earn $1,395,216 as an arts administrator: Figure out a way to blame Trump for everything. pic.twitter.com/ijo8QWbair

— slimzim (@jameszimmermann) June 16, 2025

Maybe illegal migrants themselves were keeping the opera industry afloat. If there’s one pernicious stereotype that follows border-hopping aliens, it’s a deep passion for the works of Wagner. 

Gelb has seized on the post-opera season to moan about the Trump administration. 

Appearing in Kyiv, for whatever reason, he told the audience the American government, “no longer stands for some of democracy’s most basic principles,” according to The New York Post.

The Post attributes declining ticket sales not to Trump, but to Gelb’s own mismanagement. 

For instance, running an opera centered “on an F-16 pilot grounded after she unexpectedly gets pregnant; on her return to the military, she’s still on the ground — going after human targets by manning drones,” as the New York post summarizes. “It was the worst-attended opera this season, selling just 50% of capacity.”

“I can attest that these operas resonate with audiences,” Gelb wrote for The New York Times in November of 2024. “They respond with excitement and emotion. Critics, not surprisingly, are not always enthusiastic.”

But the best-selling operas this season were classics like Verdi’s “Aida” and Mozart’s “The Magic Flute,” according to the AP. 

So laughable – Met Opera slump blamed on rounding up illegals (huge attendees of opera I’m sure) rather than on replacing classics with woke nonsense and cancelling a star for political reasons. Read this if you want to bang your head against a wall. https://t.co/9OnWPUllkp

— Inez Stepman ⚪️🔴⚪️ (@InezFeltscher) July 3, 2025

A quick browse through Reddit’s r/opera subreddit returns plenty of Gelb-scorned theatergoers, many of which are presumably liberal, given Reddit’s demographics. And given opera’s demographics. 

“Every day I see people griping here about Gelb’s decisions as manager of the Met – and not without good reason,” one user wrote two years ago, well before Trump 2.0. A post from six years ago calling for Gelb to resign was met with thunderous approval in the comments section.

Perhaps Trump is also to blame for Reddit’s collective distaste. It’s entirely plausible that the President wormed his way into the minds of millions of Redditors, planting subtle anti-Gelb seeds which would later blossom into open disdain. (RELATED: Dems Are Sliding Into Trump Derangement Blender. It’s Costing Them More Than They Realize)

Or maybe people just don’t care to cough up good money to witness a shrill, pregnant drone pilot. 

Follow Natalie Sandoval on X: @NatalieIrene03