For a man who collects adversaries as readily as he does, it is amazing how often Donald Trump manages to be his own worst enemy. When the President was being roundly and loudly booed as he attended Game 3 of the NBA finals on Monday night, it probably didn’t feel that way to Trump himself – but this was a debacle all of his own making.
Trump, knowingly or not, had done almost everything he could possibly do to make sure the crowd would be hostile to him, and in a bad mood by the time he arrived. As a result, even with tickets reselling for tens of thousands of dollars – meaning their occupants would have been in an income bracket typically better-disposed to the President – his hostile reception was inevitable.
The US President doesn’t travel light. His motorcade is dozens of cars long, and his security arrangements are extensive and exhaustive. The President needs a secure perimeter, anyone coming anywhere near him needs to be security scanned and vetted, and evacuation procedures mean that roads nearby need to be closed.
For this reason, sitting presidents tend to avoid New York most of the time, because a single visit can cause traffic chaos that paralyses the city for hours. Similarly, presidents tend to avoid NBA games altogether – the last time a president attended an NBA game before Monday night was Obama in 2015. No president has ever tried to attend an NBA finals game before.
