The Wannabe King of New York

Tonight, Donald John Trump walks into the lion's den. 

For the first time in history, a sitting American president will attend an NBA Finals game. This past week, Donald Trump committed to attending tonight's game 3 held in Midtown Manhattan's historic Madison Square Garden. Trump, who was admittedly too busy to attend his son's wedding last month because of the ongoing Iran War, has now managed to free up time in his busy schedule to take up the invitation of billionaire friend and New York Knicks owner James Dolan to watch the Knicks play the San Antonio Spurs, with the winner of the best-of-seven series becoming the new NBA champion. As a son of New York City, Trump believes that the people of NYC truly love him, and he expects cheers and adulation when he is introduced tonight at the game. For a man who rose to fame and prominence down the street, this is a full-circle moment for Trump to hear how the people in his own backyard truly feel about him. His whole life in Manhattan and his work as president have been leading up to the crowd's response to his attendance on Monday evening. 

Talk about delusions of grandeur.

Because New York City abhors Donald John Trump. They have since the get-go. They knew him as a conman, a fraud, and a carnival barker well before the rest of the country saw him in this way. They saw him carry on his father's tradition of being a slum lord and implementing racist policies that would deny Black and brown New Yorkers the chance to live in one of his properties. They saw him not as a brilliant deal-maker but as a bullshit businessman who would stiff hundreds of contractors out of their hard-earned money simply because he had the resources to do so. They saw him use $2 million from his charities to illegally settle business disputes. They saw him found guilty of fraud in an effort to illegally inflate the values of his properties to secure favorable loans. And they saw him manipulate nearly 4,000 New York City residents through his fake Trump University, a scam designed to exploit Trump's public persona as a world-famous businessman willing to share the secrets of his success. 

So when Donald Trump steps into Madison Square Garden tonight, he steps in with all that baggage. 

Because while he's technically a New Yorker, he hasn't done a single damn thing to better the city. He's been a plague on Manhattan for the last half-century. People who were stiffed by him curse his name. Students share the public shame of being duped into attending his university. Tourists no longer walk by Trump Tower in awe; they instead walk by and flip him the bird. There's a reason that Trump only won a single precinct in Manhattan in 2024: the people who know him best hate him the most. In his case, familiarity breeds contempt. When Trump left the city for good in 2019, he claimed it was due to the heavy tax burden the city and state placed on him. But the real reason was that Trump was no longer receiving the adulation of the people. Trump's ego could not handle this newfound rejection. He had no choice but to tuck his tail and run to the insular gold-pleated halls of Mar-a-Lago, where he no longer had to observe the ungrateful peasants outside his window. Leaving Manhattan was a necessary choice for a man who had become a villain in his own backyard.

New Yorkers aren't dumb. They know all this history. They know that Donald Trump isn't one of them. His values don't align with the people of the city. His anti-immigration views don't gel with one of the most multicultural cities in the world. They remember how their heroic doctors and nurses were forced to wear garbage bags during the early days of COVID when Trump refused to give New York City the resources it needed to deal with the pandemic. They know that his administration intentionally targeted Columbia University after the 2023 post-October 7th campus protests because it was a liberal university in a liberal city. Donald Trump has been president for over five years and hasn't done a single thing to help the average New Yorker. If anything, he has made their lives worse simply because they live in a blue city in a blue state that constantly rejects Donald Trump in each and every election. 

However, if all that wasn't enough, if a lifetime of hating the city that gave him everything in his life wasn't sufficient, then perhaps tonight will be the final straw. Because of Trump's appearance at the game, there is a ripple effect throughout Midtown Manhattan. Long-suffering Knicks fans hoping to walk by the stadium and take pictures ahead of the city's first NBA Finals game in 27 years will find the area largely blocked off except for those attending the game. Watch parties scheduled at bars right around the corner from the game have all been canceled. Anyone wanting to drive by the arena and honk their horn in glee will find the area closed to traffic. At a time when the area in and around Madison Square Garden should be a sea of Knicks blue and white, it will instead be a ghost town devoid of any of the chaotic fandom we'd come to expect on the evening of an NBA Finals game. And Knicks fans will have Donald Trump alone to thank for this situation.

Donald Trump will enter the arena tonight blissfully unaware of all of this. His reaction to being booed will be next level. It will be one of the most embarrassing moments of his entire presidency. Because when you surround yourself with sycophants, you have no idea how real Americans feel about you. And it doesn't get much more real than Manhattan, the place that gave Trump his entire professional life, to which he's given back absolutely nothing. Tonight will be the culmination of a half-century of ire and righteous indignation for nearly 50,000 New Yorkers who are among the most passionate fans, not only in the entire city, but in the entire country. When New York sports fans hate someone, they let him hear it. 

And there's nobody this community hates more than Donald John Trump.