Jimmy Fallon used his Tuesday night monologue to turn Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden appearance into a punch line, mocking the president for dozing off during Game 3 of the NBA Finals and for being blamed by Knicks fans for the loss.
Fallon said Trump had slept at Madison Square Garden and joked that his approval rating in San Antonio was now 100 percent, a line that landed because the Knicks had won 13 straight games before losing to the San Antonio Spurs. The timing mattered too: Trump had been at the game in New York on Monday, and Fallon was replying the next night to a moment that had already started ricocheting across social media and late-night TV.
The appearance carried extra weight because Trump was the first sitting president to attend an NBA Finals game, and the crowd at Madison Square Garden did not greet him warmly. He was booed when the arena showed him on the Jumbotron during the national anthem, and his staff tried to wave off the reaction with a joke that the audience was really saying, “we love your reflecting poooooool.”
Trump leaned in after the game and told reporters he had received a warm welcome, insisting the noise came from “enthusiastic” fans. His team then went even further online, with the White House-associated X account @RapidResponse47 replying to a image of Trump apparently asleep by writing, “He was blinking, you absolute moron.” Whether he was actually asleep or just blinking was left unresolved, but the defense made the image part of the story instead of pushing it away.
That is what gave Fallon’s joke its bite. He was not inventing a new complaint; he was amplifying a debate that had already become public, with Trump and his administration denying the boos and defending the sleeping photo as the crowd reaction hardened into a joke. Trump turns 80 on Sunday, and he is set to mark it with a UFC fight on the White House lawn, which means this week’s ridicule is only the opening act for another high-profile spectacle.
