Lin-Manuel Miranda, ‘Hamilton’ creator, says Trump election gave him ‘moral clarity’

Lin-Manuel Miranda, creator of the hit Broadway musical “Hamilton,” said Donald Trump’s presidential election gave him a great sense of “moral clarity” in what he needs to keep fighting for during the next four years.

In an interview with The Daily Beast published Tuesday, the 36-year-old playwright said he supported Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton “quite publicly” this election and compared his disappointment to the way he felt when Al Gore lost in 2000.

“That felt way scarier in a way because we didn’t even have a president. You’re supposed to have someone by the end of the night,” he said.

Mr. Miranda said he woke up the day after Mr. Trump’s win with “a very pronounced case of moral clarity.”

“In addition to the disappointment, it was like, oh, this does not change the things that I believe in,” he said. “You don’t want to go backwards when it comes to our LGBT brothers and sisters; you don’t want to go backwards when it comes to the disenfranchisement of voters of color. We have to keep fighting for the things we believe in, and it just made that very clear: I know who I am, and I know what I’m going to fight for in the years to come. That felt like the tonic of it.”

Mr. Miranda and his “Hamilton” cast made headlines last month after cast member Brandon Victor Dixon delivered a statement addressing Vice President-elect Mike Pence, who was sitting in the audience at New York’s Richard Rodgers Theatre, urging him to “work on behalf of all” Americans. Despite the subsequent backlash and a Twitter rebuke from the president-elect, Mr. Pence later said that he listened to what the “Hamilton” cast had to say and wasn’t at all offended by their method.

“I felt really grateful that Vice President-elect Pence got the message in the spirit in which we tried to give it to him, which was as respectfully as possible,” Mr. Miranda told The Daily Beast. “It was great of him to stay, and I’m really glad that he spoke the following Sunday and said that he appreciated it, wasn’t offended, and spoke to the message of what we were saying.

“I don’t know if there is a less divisive message you could give than ’please represent all of us’ — and that’s really all we said,” he added. “The fact that the notion of representing all of us is controversial? I don’t know what that says about us right now. But I am super grateful that Mike Pence got the message in the spirit in which we tried to deliver it.”