This is an adapted excerpt from the Sept. 26 episode of “Connect with Jacob Soboroff.”

When news of Donald Trump’s White House press ban broke, I revealed my high school theater nerd past by comparing the president to King Lear. Before taking the stage in my 11th-grade production of Shakespeare’s classic, we’d warm up in the parking lot by singing “One Day More” from “Les Misérables.”

Apparently, history does rhyme, because that song turned up in the strangest place last week.

During Trump’s state dinner with Chinese President Xi Jinping, a military band performed “One Day More,” the rousing “Les Misérables” anthem about people rising up against the personal and political forces oppressing them.

The band played it for Xi, the authoritarian leader of the Chinese Communist Party, which, according to The Economist, has censored songs from “Les Misérables” over their association with Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protesters. Also in the room: a U.S. president who can’t keep his hands off mail-in ballots.

If you aren’t familiar, “Les Misérables” is Victor Hugo’s story of justice, redemption and the human spirit pushing back against a cruel social, political and economic order. Set in post-revolutionary France, it follows people failed by the powerful — and the people who refuse to give up on them.

The title may have tipped you off, but it is not a particularly cheerful tale for ordinary people.

And it just so happens to be one of Trump’s favorites. He’s a huge Broadway fan. A tell-all by one of his former press secretaries, Stephanie Grisham, revealed that during his first term, an aide was assigned to play songs from “Cats” and “Phantom of the Opera” to calm him down. He has also repeatedly used show tunes at rallies, including “One Day More.”

Thursday’s state dinner was hardly the first time Trump missed the point of the show he loves. Last June, before he set his sights on tearing down the Kennedy Center, Trump attended a production of “Les Misérables” there. The internet, understandably, had thoughts. At a moment when protests against Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement surge were spreading across the country, he was apparently ready to cheer for the barricade boys.

As The Bulwark put it, “If Hugo were alive today, he undoubtedly would have made at least one of his main characters an [undocumented] immigrant … championing, as he always did, the cause and the heroic potential of the poor and despised. But this is quite obviously a perspective Trump is not capable of achieving — which makes him a very different kind of character in Hugo’s universe.”

Before that Kennedy Center performance, Trump was asked which character he identified with more: Jean Valjean, the ex-convict fighting to live an ethical life, or Javert, the rigid lawman determined to throw him back in prison. Trump called it a “tough” question.

But for anyone who has actually seen the musical, the answer is obvious: Valjean is the good guy.

The president missing the point of “Les Misérables” may seem like just another weird Trump thing. It isn’t. The arts foster empathy. They remind us that how we treat the least powerful among us says everything about who we are as a society.

“Les Misérables” asks whether we are the kind of society that imprisons Valjean for 19 years for stealing a loaf of bread. Today, we should be asking whether we are the kind of society that cages innocent children.

The president may not know whether he’s Valjean or Javert. That’s fine, because he’s neither. If Trump is anyone in “Les Misérables,” he’s the innkeeper — the “Master of the House” — fleecing customers, lying through his teeth and switching sides whenever there’s a profit to be made.

He’s not the hero. Or the villain. He’s the clown.

Allison Detxel contributed.

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