In a very timely off-the-cuff response, Broadway performer Jinkx Monsoon called out MAGA GOP lawmakers and Republican President Donald Trump for their attempts to whitewash history.
Speaking to Good Morning America about her star turn as the lead in Cole Escola’s Tony Award-winning hit Broadway show Oh, Mary!, the hosts proposed a rapid-fire game that they titled "Oh, Jinkx!."
Oh, Mary! is described by Escola, the show's creator and original star, as "a dark comedy about a miserable, suffocated Mary Todd Lincoln in the weeks leading up to Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. Unrequited yearning, alcoholism, and suppressed desires abound in this 80-minute one-act play that finally examines the forgotten life and dreams of Mrs. Lincoln, through the lens of an idiot."
GMA hosts Gio Benitez, Janai Norman and Whit Johnson threw "crazy White House" situations, or at least the Oh, Mary! version of it, at the two-time winner of RuPaul's Drag Race —Season 5 and All-Winners All-Stars—to get Monsoon's immediate reaction.
The game's final situation was:
"You’ve just been told you’re the understudy for Mary’s husband and the show starts in five minutes."
Without hesitation, Monsoon—a transgender woman—responded:
"Well, everyone, this is how it goes. Abraham Lincoln is now a trans woman, and that’s all there is to it."
"Since lawmakers get to rewrite history, why can’t I?"
Monsoon then let loose her signature cackle, which had the GMA hosts laughing along.
You can watch the moment here:
People appreciated Monsoon's honest response—and laugh.
Monsoon's comment is extremely timely as MAGA Republican President Donald Trump launches his "audit" of the Smithsonian Institution and all of the member museums to ensure adherence to his version of United States history.
The US Supreme Court is also facing pressure to overturn marriage equality, an erasure of millennia of Indigenous history in the Americas, where same-sex unions and gender beyond the binary were not only accepted, but embraced. Anti-LGBTQ+ bills, regulations, and executive orders are being proposed and enacted at the state and federal levels.
The Trump administration also removed any mentions of trans and bisexual people from government funded websites like the National Park Service's Stonewall Monument site and purged records of LGBTQ+ service members from Defense Department sites and the online records for Arlington National Cemetery.
Pushback against such revisionist history draped in a flag to hide its White supremacist and Christian nationalist origins direct from Project 2025 is vital.
And as a rising star, Jinkx Monsoon is delivering it.
On Valentine's Day 2025, Monsoon headlined a sold-out one-woman show at Carnegie Hall. Monsoon is also fresh off starring as Ruth in the limited run of Pirates! The Penzance Musical, the jazz-infused Broadway revival of the classic Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, The Pirates of Penzance, which was reset and retooled for a New Orleans setting.
Theatre goers can see Jinkx Monsoon, Kumail Nanjiani, and Michael Urie in Oh, Mary! from August 4 to September 28.
You can watch the full 5-minute GMA interview with Monsoon here:
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