Jeopardy! fans are cheering along with host Ken Jennings‘ post about President Donald Trump being booed at the NBA finals. During the National Anthem, the president was shown on the Jumbotron, and many New Yorkers joined together to boo him.
Madison Square Garden was electric on Monday night as the New York Knicks took on the San Antonio Spurs. The Knicks led two wins to zero. However, the Spurs came out with the win on Monday, making it 2-1. The first team to win four games wins the Larry O’Brien Championship Trophy and the whole season.
On the way into the arena, Trump was booed in his car as he held up traffic and made fans enter the venue hours earlier for extra security purposes. During the National Anthem, the president ignored the boos, put his hand up to his forehead in a salute, and smiled. He is a New York Native, but has been known to bash the NBA in recent years.
Jennings responded to the boos the president received. “Love to see someone booed lustily. Lustily: the only way to boo,” he wrote on BlueSky.
“In terms of all humans who have ever lived, I am in the top 0.0001% of being a Real New Yorker. (Go there maybe once a year, know not to say Avenue of the Americas or “Houston” Street, don’t think much about it at all),” he said in another post. Jennings is a Seattle, Washington native and splits his time between there and California when filming the game show.
Fans reacted to Jennings’ post in the comments. “What is the only way to boo?’ ‘What is ‘lustily’?’” a fan said.
Love to see someone booed lustily. Lustily: the only way to boo.
— Ken Jennings (@kenjennings.bsky.social) June 8, 2026 at 9:48 PM
“Exactly. A half-hearted boo is just poor civic form,” another said.
“It’s the only thing you can do lustily on broadcast TV anymore!” a third added.
“You can tell they really mean it,” a fan commented.
“I was hoping for a chant, but this will do,” one BlueSky user said.
“I watched it more times than I want to admit. Good job, Knicks fans, for speaking for the majority of Americans,” one last fan said.
MS Now host Rachel Maddow was the first to say that Trump was “lustily booed,” and fans ran with it. “Donald Trump being lustily booed when he arrived at the venue tonight in New York,” she said on her June 8 show (2:15). She laughed at the president’s “warm welcome” to the city throughout the broadcast.
Jennings added even more fuel to the fire when he reposted a Defector writer’s post about the basketball finals. “The NBA Finals have been pretty great so far, and have given fans basically everything they could have hoped for, with one exception—the chance to think more about President Donald Trump. That ends now,” the post read.
The Jeopardy! host has been vocal about his dislike for the president and his administration. He spoke out about Kristi Neom’s firing by saying that those at the airport don’t have to do what she says anymore. He also shared his thoughts on the “hero city of Minneapolis” after the ICE killings. And those are just a few examples from this year.
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