U.S. President Donald Trump at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, U.S., June 8, 2026. REUTERS/Nathan Howard
President Donald Trump became the target of very loud booing when he appeared at an NBA Finals game at New York City's Madison Square Garden on Monday night, but Trump and allies are pretending that the booing didn't happen — which, according to Salon's Sophia Tesfaye, speaks volumes about the mindset in the MAGA bubble.
"What we witnessed this week — the feverish, almost liturgical insistence that a crowd loudly booing the president of the United States was actually chanting 'USA!' — is something more disturbing and dangerous than ordinary propaganda," Tesfaye warns. "It's now clear that the crisis we face is not a lack of information; it is a profound detachment from reality, cultivated by right-wing media and anchored by a president who demands that his followers reject the evidence of their eyes and ears. Because once you understand why MAGA can't hear those boos, everything else — from the right's election denialism to Trump storming out of interviews — snaps into focus."
The anti-Trump "jeers" at Madison Square Garden, according to Tesfaye, "were loud, sustained and unambiguous"; the Salon journalist describes them as "the sound of a city that overwhelmingly voted against this man, telling him exactly what it thought of him." But MAGA Republicans who are pretending that the boos didn't happen, Tesfaye argues, are living in their own alternate reality.
"The moment the boos rang out," Tesfaye observes, "MAGA influencers and accounts on social media spun the boos into cheers with a speed that should terrify anyone who still believes in the existence of a shared factual reality. White House communications aide Margo Martin posted a clip on X claiming, 'Chants of USA in Madison Square Garden!'…. When asked about it himself, Trump offered his trademark gaslighting: 'I think mostly cheers. It was loud and it was very enthusiastic.' Even Trump's 19-year-old granddaughter was drafted into the delusion, posting on Instagram that 'the atmosphere was amazing.'"
When Trump supporters on Fox News pretended that he wasn't booed, Tesfaye stresses, it wasn't "spin in the traditional sense."
"Spin acknowledges reality and tries to tilt it," the Salon journalist explains. "This is something more extreme: the construction of an entirely separate reality in real time, one that rejects the evidence of the senses. This is what the great media critic and cultural analyst Jay Rosen has long called 'the post-truth' condition. For MAGA, contrary evidence is not something that prompts reconsideration. It is something that triggers the construction of an alternative explanation."
Tesfaye adds, "Selective hearing on this scale is wild, but it is also terrifyingly deliberate. It renders conversation entirely pointless…. The boos at Madison Square Garden were not politically significant in themselves. The refusal to hear them was."
