Jimmy Kimmel anticipated one of President Trump’s biggest gaffes at the Knicks game on Monday.
Trump attended Game 3 of the NBA finals, spending the event in a luxury suite behind bulletproof glass. At one point, Trump was recorded with his eyes closed in an apparent doze. He eventually reopened his eyes, seeming to have been startled awake by the noise of the crowd.
Monday’s episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live! was taped before the Knicks game aired, but Kimmel noted in his monologue that the game’s 8:30 p.m. start time might be “pretty late for the president to be out.”
“Fortunately,” Kimmel joked about the president, “he was able to squeeze in a nap during every one of his meetings today.”
Kimmel was referring to Trump’s growing tendency to seemingly doze off at public events. Most recently Trump had fallen into apparent slumber at a Friday roundtable event in Wisconsin.
Critics have speculated that Trump is tired during official events because he’s up late posting on social media. The Daily Beast has started tracking Trump’s late-night Truth Social habits and found that, based on the timing of his posts, he likely hadn’t enjoyed more than five full nights of sleep in the entire month of April.
When Trump wasn’t falling asleep at the Knicks game, he was often being booed by the fans in the arena.
Trump received his loudest boos when he first showed up on camera during the National Anthem, but the boos from the crowd continued every time the camera turned back to him. This reception was roughly what Kimmel expected:
“We don’t know what happened or who won,” Kimmel told viewers. “All we know for sure is that Trump is about as popular in New York as pineapple on pizza.”
Trump’s attendance at the game was unpopular not just because New York City is a heavily Democratic area of the country, but because his visit directly inconvenienced thousands of Knicks fans.
To accommodate Trump, the NYPD set up a perimeter outside the neighborhoods surrounding Madison Square Garden, restricting the area’s vehicular and pedestrian traffic. The heightened security measures led to the Knicks press team advising attendees to arrive “at least two hours before tip-off to allow additional time for screening and entry.”
This security measure made it harder for Knicks fans to get to the game and inconvenienced regular commuters heading to and from Penn Station, a major transit hub located directly below MSG.
Trump’s attendance also meant that several watch parties outside the event had to be canceled; it was especially frustrating for Knicks fans given that this was the first game in the NBA finals to be played in New York City.
Kimmel declared about Trump’s impact on the event, “Donald Trump is the first sitting president ever to completely disrupt an NBA finals game in person.”
