The New York Knicks basketball crowd likes to consider itself as the cognoscenti of the game and has been merciless in the hostility directed at visiting stars such as Michael Jordan and Reggie Miller down the decades. But few guests have been booed with thunderous energy which greeted city son and president Donald Trump when he attended game three of the NBA finals between the Knicks and the San Antonio Spurs on Monday night.
The jumbotron displayed Trump, accompanied by granddaughter Kai and Knicks owner James Dolan, when the first bars of the anthem were played. The boos in the arena were deafening – in notable contrast to Trump’s last Garden appearance, for an election campaign mega-rally in October of 2024.
Meanwhile, Trump, vice-president JD Vance and former Doge supremo Elon Musk all took aim at the validity of the ongoing first count of the Los Angeles mayoral race after a startling twist in results.
In California, voters choose candidates regardless of their party. The top two candidates - winner and runner-up - then face each other in another election.
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Over the course of Monday, the narrow lead held by Spencer Pratt, the reality star turned anti-establishment candidate, disappeared and he was overtaken by Democratic councilwoman Nithya Raman, who was declared the official runner-up by major networks on Monday evening. Trump had sensed the shift earlier in the day and before he departed for Manhattan, he took to social media to declare that it is “not possible” for Pratt to have lost the run-offs.
“3rd World Nation. Rigged Elections! Now they’ll be working on great guy Steve Hilton. Won’t have results for possibly TWO WEEKS, according to officials.”
Hilton, the British-born conservative commentator who worked as a strategy adviser to former Tory prime minister David Cameron, is the Republican candidate in the California governor race and is locked in a tight battle with Democrat Tom Steyer for the runner-up spot behind Xavier Becerra, also a Democrat. The top two vote-getters in the primary will then campaign for the November election.
But the premature celebrations of the Pratt campaign, which believed it had secured the Los Angeles mayoral second spot behind incumbent Karen Bass, was the focus of White House-led claims of voter fraud in the heavily Democratic city.
“Somehow we find ourselves in a situation where they are still receiving ballots, not just counting ballots. And number two, the way they are coming in just so happens to work out such that a Republican is getting kicked out of the final two so it’s a Democrat-versus-Democrat run-off,” said vice-president Vance on a Fox News interview.
“That seems pretty shady to me, especially when added on top of the fact that in California you are prohibited from asking for someone’s identification when they vote.”
It is true that California does not make that requirement. The state’s official page on voting criteria states that first-time voters who registered to vote by mail without providing a valid identification – a driver’s licence number, a California ID or the last four digits of a social security number – may be asked to show a form of identification when they turn up at the polls.
Elon Musk marked Pratt’s declining fortunes with a series of posts on his X platform on Monday: “The system is rotten”; “The level of fraud here is mind-blowing.”
Democratic strategists explained the surge of votes for Raman as typical of Democratic voter behaviour, as they tend to vote late and in person, rather than early and by mail. Los Angeles is also a heavily Democratic city, and party officials have pointed out that Bass now faces a much tougher campaign against her progressive colleague rather than what they believe would have been a formality in November had Pratt edged through.
Throughout her campaign, Raman had sought to accentuate the differences between her values and those of the former television star, using clips from Pratt’s appearance on the Alex Jones podcast to align him with far-right Maga values.
“These are the polices that Spencer Pratt wants to bring to Los Angeles – hatred, fear, conspiracy theorising, stupidity – the same thing that we’ve seen from the Trump administration. If his campaign is allowed to continue for even a few more months it’s going to make this city a lot more hateful and a lot more stupid.”
In a statement issued on Monday night, Raman, who announced her intention to run just over 100 days ago, said she was “incredibly honoured” by the results.
“Now our fight for a healthier, safer, more affordable and more joyful Los Angeles continues. For too long, City Hall has prioritised giving political advantage to powerful interests that fund elections. Meanwhile people pay the price in higher rents, depleted services and a city that has stopped working for them. If you’re as frustrated by the broken status as I am, I hope you’ll join our movement to build a city that works for everyone.”
As LA prepares for the first World Cup game in the United States, when the host team plays Paraguay on Friday, the elimination of Pratt means that the wait for the city’s first Republican mayor since Richard Riordan stepped down in 2001 after two terms in office will continue.
On Monday evening, however, the sports screens in all the bars and restaurants were tuned into the big basketball game in New York.
Trump’s attendance meant that four blocks either side of Madison Square Garden were entirely fenced off, necessitating the cancellation of the carnivalesque watch parties in and around Eighth Avenue and 33rd. He became the first sitting president to attend a finals match – and his presence did not work a charm. Having won the first two games in San Antonio against the Spurs, the Knicks returned to a city tremulous with expectation and a Madison Square Garden overflowing with celebrities tapping into their long-lost love of the Knicks.
Unlike many of those front-rowers, Trump can at least point to footage of his attendance at Knicks games dating back to the 1980s. New York mayor Zohran Mamdani demonstrated his political nous by buying a ticket in the nosebleed seats and sitting among his people.
Almost inevitably, the Knicks lost, ending an enchanted 13-game winning streak. If their team goes on to blow the best-of-seven series, and a first NBA title since 1973, New Yorkers will label Monday night in the Garden as the curse of the Don.
By the time the game ended, it was obvious that over in Los Angeles Spencer Pratt had lost, too.
The president cried foul.
