JD Vance's Les Mis Joke Has Us Cringing For Poor Usha

"I dreamed a dream in time gone by..." that Vice President JD Vance wasn't so cringey and desperate for attention. Vice President Vance has channeled President Donald Trump's awkward energy since the two became running mates, and his life got even more embarrassing when the president stopped pretending to care about him. Though President Trump previously gave him the cold shoulder in favor of Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the vice president still took the commander in chief's side in the Musk v. Trump divorce by slipping in a predictably cringey joke. It seems his desperate efforts to seem humble and approachable aren't slowing down anytime soon, and he's willing to take his wife, first lady Usha Vance, down with him.

JD joined Trump for a night at the theater on June 11, 2025. He unsurprisingly seized the opportunity as another source of forced fodder. "About to see 'Les Misérables' with POTUS at the Kennedy Center," the vice president wrote in an X post before the show started. "Me to Usha: 'So what's this about? A barber who kills people?'" JD may have thought he was being cute by purposefully butchering his musical description and mistaking Jean Valjean for the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Sweeney Todd. He said Usha responded in a fit of uncontrollable laughter. For all we know, she very well could have thought the joke was actually funny, or she at least overdid her reaction to make her husband feel better about his unfunny quip. However, it also could've been a sign she's heard too many of his bad jokes or has perhaps been around him for too long and has finally lost sense of what's funny.

Vice President JD Vance's intentionally oblivious theater joke could've been his way of proving that he's a man of the people. He reveled in his perceived humor for too long, however, and subsequently ruined the bit by over-explaining it. "That's apparently a different thing called 'Sweeney Todd,'" he wrote in another X post.

Though Vice President Vance probably thought he'd hear the people sing his praises for his perceived hilarity, he instead heard some people singing the songs of angry men in the comments section. Some X users thought the vice president's intentional ignorance, for humor's sake, was a crime worse than stealing a loaf of bread. "Guh-HYUCK! It's funnah and charmin' t'be ig'nant, ain't it?" one X user wrote in an exaggerated mimicking of Appalachian dialect. "Why, they ain't have none of these high-falutin' play-actin' shows back up in the hills what that you growed up in, did they?" Others wouldn't have been surprised if the show was beyond his and President Donald Trump's comprehension. "Yeah, pretty sure they're going to miss the entire point of the show, and French history," another commenter wrote. Besides his usual supporters, the vice president was seemingly left on his own to enjoy his humor.