Trump Drops Wild Excuse for Avoiding NBA Games After His Mass Booing
The president’s appearance at the playoffs descended into a farce.
President Donald Trump has trotted out a questionable excuse for missing the next NBA Finals game after his excruciating cameo on Monday evening.
The president, who turns 80 on Sunday, was present as the New York Knicks fell to defeat against the San Antonio Spurs in game three at Madison Square Garden. The president always faces a tough crowd in his liberal-leaning home city, but he rankled New Yorkers even further by plunging the area around the venue into lockdown mode with his presence.
Ticket holders were forced to endure airport-style security to get into the game, and the area around the venue resembled a war zone, with special agents and thousands of cops patrolling the streets. The circus created by Trump’s attendance was reflected in the welcome he received inside.

The Knicks lost to the San Antonio Spurs.
Anadolu/Anadolu via Getty Images
Fans went red in the face, booing and heckling the Republican figurehead as he popped up on screen when the national anthem was being sung. An impromptu nap and a Knicks loss later, Trump faced the press and came up with what appeared to be a well-timed excuse for missing the next game in the series.
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“I don’t, uh, I don’t…we’re busy, uh, with a lot of important stuff right now at EPA,” Lee Zeldin, Trump’s Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency and de facto NBA playoffs spokesman, bumbled when asked by reporters if the president would make the game in San Antonio on Thursday.
“Like a war,” Trump interjected, before grinning. He used this same excuse to snub his own son’s wedding last month, before indulging in rounds of golf and Monday’s basketball game.
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“There’s, there’s a lot of important stuff, uhh, going on,” Zeldin spluttered.

Trump appeared to doze off next to Knicks owner James Dolan at Monday's NBA playoff game in New York.
Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images
Last month, Trump flaked on Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding to socialite Bettina Anderson. Asked in the Oval Office if he’d be attending the nuptials, Trump replied: “He’d like me to go… I’m going to try and make it. I said: ‘You know, this is not good timing for me. I have a thing called Iran…’ That’s one I can’t win on.”
He later wrote on Truth Social that he could not make the wedding because of “circumstances pertaining to Government.”
Less than a week later, he played golf at Trump National Golf Club, Washington, D.C., on two consecutive days.
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