Donald Trump walked into Madison Square Garden on Sunday night, got booed so loudly Al Jazeera called it “thunderous”, and then boarded Air Force One and told reporters it was “mostly cheers.”
I grew up in Bergen County. I know what MSG sounds like when it boos something. It sounds like that.
The moment played out exactly the way anyone who has ever been to a game in that building could have scripted it. Trump appeared on the Jumbotron during the national anthem (Game 3, NBA Finals, Knicks hosting the Spurs) and the response was sustained, loud, and completely unambiguous. The White House press pool described it as “loud and long.” It was audible on the ABC broadcast. The crowd at Bryant Park, watching on outdoor screens, did the same thing when his face appeared.
Then the camera cut to Jalen Brunson and the place went raucous.
That sequence — the boos, the silence, the eruption for Brunson — tells you everything you need to know about what room Trump was in and what room he thought he was in. Two entirely different places.
https://twitter.com/JustEsBaraheni/status/2064144970294915339
We already knew this was coming, given the whole circus of getting into the arena: two-hour security lines, TSA screening, the outdoor watch party canceled. James Dolan invited him. The city did not extend the same courtesy.
Trump’s in-arena reaction was to smile and salute through the national anthem while the sound rained down. That part is genuinely whatever. Politicians take boos. It happens. The thing that is legitimately one of the funniest sports moments of 2026 is what came after.
“I thought it was very good. It was certainly amazing. I think mostly cheers. It was loud. And it was very enthusiastic.”
“Mostly cheers.”
There’s a specific type of person who walks into a building, gets booed by fifteen thousand people, and processes that as a reception. It requires a truly remarkable relationship with reality. He also said the NBA is “a little bit left wing, but it’s great entertainment,” which is a sentence I am going to be thinking about for months. A little bit left wing. Like saying MSG is a little bit loud.
Cameras also appeared to catch Trump with his eyes closed during the game (video hit 16 million views, White House disputed it), which would mean he possibly slept through the Knicks losing Game 3, 115-111, snapping a 13-game playoff winning streak that was the second-longest in NBA history. Spurs win. Knicks still lead 2-1.
The official “mostly cheers” transcript is going to outlive everything else that happened in that building Sunday night. The Knicks dropped a game they probably should have won. The streak is over. But “I think mostly cheers” — that line has legs.
Revis heard it from across the apartment and left the room.
