New Yorkers overwhelmingly reject Trump at NBA Finals

As the Star-Spangled Banner was being sung on the court inside Madison Square Garden before Game 3 of the NBA Finals, Donald Trump stood high above, his hand raised in salute, with his granddaughter just behind him. Within seconds, a wave of boos began rolling through the crowd, growing louder and louder until it seemed to overwhelm everything else. Thousands of people packed into one of the most famous arenas in the country made their feelings known all at once. And as it was happening, Donald Trump stood there smiling, either unable to accept the sheer volume of boos being directed at him, or simply pretending they weren't happening at all.

Based on the events of 6-8-2026

The Breakdown:

• Trump was loudly booed at Madison Square Garden during the national anthem before Game 3 of the NBA Finals
• His granddaughter read the room instantly. He did not, or would not
• Trump attended as the first sitting president to ever attend an NBA Finals game, the guest of Knicks owner James Dolan
• His attendance forced a security lockdown across midtown Manhattan
• The free Plaza33 watch party, where thousands of fans who could not afford a ticket gather to watch together, was canceled in coordination with the Secret Service
• Why other presidents have largely stayed away from moments like this
• At one point, Trump fell asleep at the game
• He left before the game was even over. The Knicks lost, snapping their thirteen-game winning streak
• A new Reuters/Ipsos poll puts his approval at 35 percent
• On the economy, only 29 percent approve. On Iran, only 29 percent. On the cost of living, 22 percent. On inflation, 21 percent
• Why feeling numb to all of this is dangerous, and why nothing with Trump is ever just a distraction
• Why forgetting is just exhaustion with a longer name
• The generation among us who learned about fascism in their soul, not from a book, and what we lose as they leave us
• Why sharing what we have lived through, especially online, is the torch being passed in the only room where so many of our kids are actually standing
• A federal judge struck down the administration's assault on wind and solar, vacating an IRS rule designed to strip clean energy projects of tax credits
• The judge called it arbitrary and capricious
• Another federal judge in Boston threw out Trump's $100,000 fee on H-1B visas, ruling it was an unlawful tax a president has no power to invent
• Why the lower courts holding on the small things is how we know they may hold on the big things
• Why the fight that is coming is not really about wind energy or visa fees. It is about the vote

If you are tired tonight, I understand. But the booing in that arena was not the sound of a country giving up. It was the sound of thousands of people who still recognized exactly what they were looking at and refused to pretend otherwise. That is the torch, still lit. And as long as we keep handing it to one another, one tired hand to the next, it does not go out.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

I'm Heather Telaney Reese, and you're listening to Hope for America, where every day I bring you the truth about our politics, our country, and the forces trying to destroy them. Together, we cut through the noise, expose the lies, and stay focused on what really matters, fighting for the survival of our country. Last night, as the Star Spangled Banner was being sung on the court inside Madison Square Garden before game three of the NBA finals, Donald Trump stood high above, his hand raised in salute with his granddaughter just behind him. And as the anthem played, the broadcast cameras moved from player to player before eventually finding Trump. And within seconds, a wave of booze began rolling through the crowd, growing louder and louder until it seemed to overwhelm everything else. Thousands of people packed into one of the most famous arenas in the country made their feelings known all at once. And as it was happening, Donald Trump stood there, smiling as the noise washed over him, either unable to accept the sheer volume of boos being directed at him, or simply pretending they weren't happening at all. But his granddaughter knew exactly what was happening. As the booing grew louder, the smile left her face, replaced instead by awkward blinking and a look of deep discomfort. That contrast is the whole night in a single frame. He could not register what the room was telling him as he stood with his granddaughter, who read it instantly. She understood the noise. He did not or would not. And the thousands of people making that noise understood the exact message they were sending. They wanted him to know that he was not welcome and certainly not loved, like Trump likes to say he is. Trump came last night as the first sitting president to ever attend an NBA Finals game, the guest of Knicks owner, James Dolan, and his attendants forced a security lockdown across midtown Manhattan, a perimeter of closed streets and shuttered blocks built around one man. And the thing that got sacrificed for it was the free watch party that was supposed to take place right outside the arena. The Plaza 33 gathering, the one where thousands of fans who could not afford a ticket still come down, stand shoulder to shoulder with strangers, and watch the game together on a giant screen. That was the part that belonged to everyone. That was the part that cost nothing and meant the most. And it was canceled in coordination with the Secret Service because he wanted to be there. The official line is that this was a permitting decision and had nothing to do with the president. Nobody believes that. Because everybody understands that the lockdown existed for one reason only. This is why other presidents have largely stayed away from moments like this. Not because they do not like basketball or don't want to be part of the celebration, but because they understand that their arrival turns a celebration into a security operation, that it takes a night that belongs to a city and makes it about them. It is also extremely costly for everyone involved, much of that cost being paid by taxpayers, the same ones he was inconveniencing. Trump does not understand that, or he simply does not care, which amounts to the same thing. And at one point, he even fell asleep during the game. That's the guest of honor at a celebration he had ruined asleep through the thing thousands of people had been locked out of their own streets to make possible. And then before the game was even over, he left. After shutting down streets, rerouting traffic, surrounding the arena with security, and turning what should have been a celebration of New York basketball into a presidential spectacle, he walked out early. The Knicks eventually lost, snapping their 13-game winning streak, and plenty of fans were quick to blame Trump. A lot of New Yorkers would have preferred he had stayed home. And it was by available measure one more bad night at the end of a long run of them for the president. A new Reuters Ipsos poll completed yesterday put his approval at 35%. Dragged down by the war he launched in Iran and the gas prices people feel every time they fill their tanks. The numbers show that he is underwater across the board. On the economy, only 29% approve. On Iran, only 29% approve. Only 22% approve of the cost of living, and just 21% approve of inflation or rising prices. He is deeply unpopular, no matter what he says or how hard he tries to make us believe otherwise. And watching this latest spectacle, I found myself feeling something I don't particularly like admitting. Numb. Because it felt so predictable. Like just another day in Trump's America, another outrage, another embarrassing moment, another thing that would have been absolutely shocking before Trump, that barely surprises us anymore. And I don't like that feeling. Because we shouldn't be used to any of this. We shouldn't be rolling our eyes and moving on to the next story. We shouldn't be treating any of this as normal. But that's what happens when the chaos never stops. After a while, even the outrageous starts to feel routine. And that's dangerous because with Trump, nothing is ever just a joke, a distraction, or a bad moment. There is always something bigger underneath it, a purpose, a goal, a movement pushing forward. Maybe not one Donald Trump personally planned out himself, but one being carried out in his name. So when we see him being reckless, or when we see the country turn on him, neither are the hard part anymore. They are, in a strange way, the easy parts now. The hard part, the part I have been growing more concerned about, is that even the people who see it clearly, even the people who care are getting tired of looking. I feel it in the comments and I feel it in myself. There's a particular exhaustion that comes from witnessing something terrible every single day and being asked to keep witnessing it, to keep our eyes open, to not let it become background noise. And I'm learning just how much a human body can absorb before it begins to turn away. And I'm not talking about the people who never cared. I'm talking about the ones who did us, the ones who still do, the ones who are simply worn down to the bone. And I think about that a great deal because forgetting and exhaustion are not really two different things. Forgetting is just exhaustion with a longer name. A country does not lose its memory all at once. It loses it one tired person at a time, one turned away face at a time, until the thing that everyone once saw clearly becomes a thing nobody can quite remember the shape of. And what frightens me more than almost anything is the added layer that we are about to start losing more of the people who remember it best. There's a generation among us in their 70s, 80s, 90s, and beyond, who did not learn about fascism from a book or a documentary or a post like this one. They learned it in their soul. They learned it from a parent who came home from the war changed, or who did not come home at all. They learned it from the silence at the dinner table and from the relatives whose names were spoken carefully or not spoken at all, from grandparents who told stories for future generations to keep telling. And within the next few decades, maybe sooner, the last of them will be gone. And the warning they carried will stop being memory and just become history. And history is so much easier to wave away than a scar. And I think about my own grandparents. Then I think about all of the questions I never asked. I think about the answers I longed to have today, like what it was like to live through the Great Depression and through World War II, through so many pivotal moments in not just the history of the United States, but the world. And the answer always comes back to the same thing. We have to figure out how to stay in the fight without burning to the ground. And maybe the most important thing we can do is to be there for each other, to build community around the people who still care about this country and the world, the people who still care enough to show up, to support each other, and also to take turns. We do not ask any one person to carry the whole weight of this alone because that is exactly how the weight wins. And we document, we share what is true. We refuse to let the daily whores calcify into the background noise. And we recognize that the way memory travels has changed, whether we like it or not. Our kids and our grandchildren are not getting their history at the dinner table the way some of us did. They're getting it on a screen and often from less than ideal teachers. The folklore that used to pass between generations in a living room now passes through the internet. And that is exactly why it matters so much when an older person, someone who remembers, shares what they have seen and lived through, especially online. Because that is the torch being passed to the only room where so many of our kids are actually standing. That is memory finding a new place to live. And it's not just those in their golden years. This is something all of us can do. We can share what we know, we can share what we have lived through. We can leave something behind for future generations to find and learn from years from now. I can't imagine the joy I would feel or the lessons I would learn if I somehow discovered lost diaries from my long-gone family members. But we can do that now for the people who come after us. And we need to remember that this fight is not just being fought by us. It also continues to be fought in the courts as his agenda keeps coming apart. The booze at the garden were just the icing on an already spoiled cake. These fights are not necessarily being won in the Supreme Court, which is shown as repeatedly whose side it is on, but with the lower courts, the district judges, the individual men and women in robes who keep looking at what this administration is doing and keep naming it correctly as outside the law. Because this weekend, a federal judge struck down the administration's assault on wind and solar, vacating an IRS rule that had quietly rewritten the definition of when a clean energy project begins construction. It's a technical sounding change designed to strip those projects of the tax credits that make them possible. The judge called it arbitrary and capricious, which is the law's way of saying it was never about anything but spite. I want you all to know that when I said that out loud, I said, what did I say, Pete? Capriccious. Capricious. I said capriccious. So that's what we're dealing with here in the background. Back to what I was saying though. And yesterday in Boston, another federal judge threw out his 100,000 fee on H1B visas ruling that it was never a fee at all, but an unlawful tax. And then that a president has no power to invent a tax that Congress never passed. These are people exhausted in their own way, under enormous pressure, choosing to hold the line anyway. What is standing between us and the total collapse right now is not the system functioning on its own. It's individual people refusing to look away. It is recognition institutionalized in the courtroom. We are going to need them. We're going to need every single one of them because the fight that is coming is not really about wind energy or visa fees. It is about the vote. We already know what he is willing to do to an election he does not like. We have watched him try to overthrow one. And the midterms are barreling towards us. And somewhere between now and then, whether it is before the votes are cast or during the counting or after the results come in, he is going to test those courts again. Harder than he has tested anything yet. The fact that they are holding last night and last weekend, right now, on the small things is how we know they may very well hold on the big things too. So if you are tired, I understand I am too. But the booing in that arena last night was the sound of a country not giving up. It was the sound of thousands of people who recognize exactly what they were looking at and refuse to pretend otherwise. That is the torch still lit. And as long as we keep handing it to one another, one tired hand to another, it does not go out. Ever. And that is why I still have hope for America, and you should too. And remember, no matter how dark the days get, I will be here every single day, and together we will always find hope for America. I'll see you tomorrow.