Trump expected to be 'showered with boos' at Madison Square Garden

This Monday night, June 8, President Donald Trump is planning to attend an NBA Finals game at New York City's Madison Square Garden. But the Queens native is unpopular in his home town, which is predominantly Democratic. And according to the Washington Post reporter Dan Diamond, Trump is "widely expected to be showered with boos" at the NBA (National Basketball Association) game — where the New York Knicks will be competing with the San Antonio Spurs.

Trump, Diamond reports, was invited by Knicks owner James Dolan.

"Some sports fans and analysts have urged Trump not to attend the game — commentator Stephen A. Smith said it would create an unnecessary spectacle — or pledged to jeer the president," Barrett explains in the Post. "Online betting services also predict Trump will be booed in his visit to deep-blue New York City and the Knicks' arena, Madison Square Garden. The team's fans are famously unforgiving — quick to taunt rival players, the team's own stars and recent New York mayor Eric Adams just days after his inauguration."

Barrett continues, "As an added frustration, Trump's presence will create logistical hurdles for the roughly 20,000 other attendees, who have been told to arrive at least two hours before tip-off because of the enhanced security measures that follow the president."

Dan Pfeiffer, who served as an adviser to former President Barack Obama, suggested that the high price of NBA Finals tickets could make Trump less likely to be booed at Madison Square Garden.

Pfeiffer told the Post, "(A) typical Madison Square Garden crowd would boo the daylights out of Trump, but he might benefit from a crowd willing to spend $10,000 to sit in the rafters."

Harrison Fields, a former White House deputy press secretary, told the Post, " New York City and an NBA audience might be considered hostile territory, but when has that ever stopped the president?"

In a June 5 post on X, sportswriter Shea Serrano encouraged NBA Finals attendees at Madison Square Garden to "boo this m– – so thunderously when they show him on the jumbotron that my TV vibrates off the wall."

Serrano told the Post, "His decision to attend Game 3 of the NBA Finals will do for the game what his participation in seemingly everything does: make it actively worse, in one way or another, for everyone else involved."

Progressive New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, an ally of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) is also expected to attend the game and, according to Barrett, "has been embraced by some fans for his willingness to join them in the rafters."