All Of The Times Donald Trump Was Booed In Public

Donald Trump has been one of the most polarizing and divisive political figures in U.S. history, and his many critics have made sure he knows this through endless articles, social media posts, protests, and, yes, boos. However, one wonders how often Trump even realizes he's being criticized. When a narcissist is booed, do they really hear cheers?

Journalist Randall Lane once recounted a moment when Trump was bombarded by boos from fellow New Yorkers in September 2015. Writing for Forbes, Lane recalled, "I heard and almost felt the rumble: jeers, whistles, boos, anger, all in our direction. So how did this Manhattan prince react to the Bronx cheer? I figured the candidate, like most politicians, would laugh, take his lumps and glibly shrug it off." Instead, Lane was astounded by Trump's response: "Ninety percent positive," Trump told Lane, oblivious to the thundering negativity.

While this anecdote illustrates the subjectivity of perception, it's also a reminder that someone like Trump may never be swayed or influenced by public opinion. Thus, perhaps the cacophony of boos Trump is often subjected to is less a form of feedback and more like the emotional, impotent cries of a powerless populace who just want to be heard, even if they'll never be listened to. We've documented their loudest moments.

Long before we entered the seemingly endless era of Donald Trump presidencies and campaigns, the New Yorker was just a loud real estate mogul with many opinions. Back then, people weren't terrified of contradicting or opposing him, either, and it shows in footage of Trump at the 2011 Conservative Political Action Conference, where he was loudly booed.

Trump was still weighing whether to run for president, as evidenced by his speech. He was met with unexpected hostility from the crowd, though, when he said (via Outside the Beltway), "Ron Paul can not get elected, I'm sorry." The crowd booed this innocuous comment, with Trump adding to more jeers, "I like Ron Paul and think he's a good guy. But he's got zero chance of getting elected, I'm sorry."

The rowdy CPAC crowd from 2011 didn't deter Donald Trump from returning to the conference in 2015, four months before announcing his presidential campaign. While he was reportedly well-received, at least compared to 2011, he did encounter a chorus of boos when he discussed foreign policy, a moment which may have shaped his later thoughts on the subject.

After sharing more of his strange conspiracy theories regarding Barack Obama, Trump was asked by Sean Hannity about the threat of ISIS. "You may have to have some boots on the ground for a period of time until you're rid of the cancer," he said, triggering loud boos from the audience (per Crooks and Liars).

It didn't take long for Donald Trump to receive backlash after announcing his presidential campaign with an incendiary speech on June 16, 2015. While condemnation largely came from liberals, many conservatives critiqued Trump as well, at least those who took him seriously. On September 25, Trump attended the 2015 Values Voter Summit, where he was booed for continuously insulting fellow Republican candidate Marco Rubio.

While it seems quaint all these years later, Trump's belittling of fellow candidates in his party was not always popular, and a round of boos erupted when he called Rubio a "clown" at the meeting of social conservatives. While it could be argued that people were booing Rubio at the mention of his name, there's little validity to Trump's defense that, as he told reporter Katy Tur, "Those weren't boos, they were cheers!"

The Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner has typically been a roast-style chance for presidential candidates to show off their humorous side while raising money for Catholic charities. Of course, ever atypical, Donald Trump used the opportunity to relentlessly dig into his political opponent, Hillary Clinton.

"Hillary is so corrupt, she got kicked [off] the Watergate Commission," Trump said to boos from the crowd (per Politico). Attendees yelled for him to finish as he continued to critique Clinton's decades in politics and the emails she sent on a private server, even saying, "Here she is tonight in public pretending not to hate Catholics." After a cacophony of boos, Trump said, "That's okay, Hillary, I don't know who they're angry at: you or I." Members of the audience yelled back, "You!"

Before all the votes were counted and Donald Trump shocked the world (and pollsters everywhere) with a surprise presidential win in 2016, he seemed like a long shot, someone who would need every vote he could get. When Trump went out on November 8 to cast one of those votes in Manhattan, he was met by booing protestors.

As usual, Trump ignored the criticism as he entered the polling station alongside his wife, Melania Trump, and daughter, Ivanka Trump, while one person shouted, "Go home!" After the Trumps spent about 10 minutes voting, they reemerged to even more heckles and boos.

Shortly after his first surprise presidential win, Donald Trump spoke with The New York Times and walked back some campaign promises to seemingly have a broader appeal. This hardly silenced his critics.

After his interview, Trump was met by a large crowd on the ground-floor lobby of The Times (which is a public-access thoroughfare). While there was certainly a mixture of journalists, supporters, and critics, the booing clearly drowned out the sound of cheers or questions.

Donald Trump's first Inauguration Day has become infamous because of his long-lasting insistence that the crowd was much bigger than it actually was. This has somewhat overshadowed the fact that the incoming president was met by thousands of booing protesters.

As usual, supporters of Trump were spread throughout the crowd, but the live audio of Trump's speech piped onto the streets was often overwhelmed by the angry jeers. Eventually, more than 90 people were arrested when riots broke out.

Despite being elected president, Donald Trump continued to hold campaign-style rallies throughout the country, and protesters continued to show up for them. When Trump visited Louisville, Kentucky, a state he carried by 30%, roughly 1,500 protesters greeted him.

People from groups like Black Lives Matter and Indivisible Kentucky joined the crowd of unaffiliated, disgruntled citizens to wave signs and chant critiques. Trump gave his speech to thousands of supporters, but the occasion proved that there would always be vocal division wherever Trump went.

In January 2018, Donald Trump gave a speech at the World Economic Forum, where influential figures gathered to discuss important financial issues. There, he was mostly mocked and jeered by the audience when he trashed the free press. "It wasn't until I became a politician that I realized how nasty, how mean, how vicious, and how fake the press can be," Trump said at the forum (via Nightline).

While it might seem quaint all these years later to think anyone would still be offended by Trump's attacks on journalists, it was apparently still fresh to people overseas in 2018. "Of the years that I've been here at the economic forum, I've rarely heard that very civilized audience laugh at a speech and very rarely heard them boo a speech," said NBC's Keir Simmons (via Euronews), who was present at the event.

Despite the occasional rowdiness of its audiences, sports have an inherently patriotic thread woven through them, especially baseball — the national anthem has been played at MLB games for more than a century. So, it's a bit surprising how much animosity was directed at Donald Trump when he attended the 2019 World Series between the Houston Astros and the Washington Nationals.

Trump was roundly booed by the crowd at two different games, though he only attended Game 5, where it seemed like the whole crowd of 41,000 people at Nationals Park was jeering him with 100 decibels of noise. Perhaps that's why he didn't attend Game 7, though that didn't stop those in attendance from booing him again. When a campaign commercial appeared on the Jumbotron, the audience reacted similarly to Game 5 with a wave of boos and chants.

While the UFC is hardly a national pastime like baseball, the sport has an arguably more conservative audience, and Donald Trump has a long history with it. Thus, it was surprising to see him get booed at a UFC fight shortly after his humiliating World Series experience. While the UFC audience was less universally united in its contempt for Trump than the MLB crowd, the boos were nonetheless notable.

Trump supporters and the president himself pushed back against reports of booing, employing the usual tactic of confusing boos with cheers. Trump called it "fake news" on X, formerly Twitter, despite plenty of video evidence documenting the audible boos.

Donald Trump has had a complicated relationship with veterans in America, supporting them in theory but also mocking John McCain's military service and attacking a Gold Star family. So, it makes sense that the president encountered many booing protesters during his appearance at the 2019 Veterans Day parade in New York City.

Around 25,000 people marched after Trump's speech, including protesters who, once again, chanted, "Lock him up!" Banners and signs calling Trump a traitor and demanding impeachment littered the New York streets, while people in "Vets Against Trump" shirts denounced the president.

A seemingly solemn event like Veterans Day may seem like a surprising time to boo the U.S. President, but Donald Trump has even been booed at funerals. More precisely, he was booed at a viewing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg's casket after the Supreme Court Justice died in September 2020. Trump paid his respects at the court, standing by the flag-draped coffin while crowds booed and screamed, "Vote him out!"

He and Melania Trump were driven away in their limousine shortly after, with the president eventually playing down the situation as usual. "I think that was just a political chant. We could hardly hear it from where we were," Trump later remarked while leaving the White House (per CNN).

Even Donald Trump's own supporters have raised their voices against him. That was the case when Trump held rallies in 2021 for a variety of reasons, including soft-launching his 2024 presidential campaign and spreading misinformation about the 2020 election results. When he failed to spread misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine, too, his supporters at an Alabama rally turned on him.

Vaccine skepticism had spread throughout the MAGA faithful by this point in 2021, so it was difficult for Trump to tout what was actually one of his greatest achievements – Operation Warp Speed, or the federal plan for COVID vaccines. This was the real reason Trump was booed at his Alabama rally, for simply suggesting that people take the vaccine.

Another Donald Trump event in 2021 proved that the vaccine issue is one of the only things that Donald Trump supporters will actually boo the MAGA leader about. For the final stop in a series of sparsely attended live events called The History Tour, Trump and former Fox News host Bill O'Reilly stopped in Dallas days before Christmas and received a bevy of boos.

All it took to elicit boos from those in attendance who paid good money to see Trump was the admission that he and O'Reilly received COVID-19 booster shots. "Did you get the booster?" O'Reilly asked Trump (via The Guardian), who simply said, "Yes." As soon as the crowd began booing, an annoyed Trump waved his hands and implored, "Don't! Don't, don't, don't!" Trump, who was already plotting his return to politics, seemed to learn his lesson from this event, mostly avoiding vaccine talk moving forward.

While Libertarians are certainly different from Republicans in many regards, they still seemed similar enough to surprise many people when Donald Trump was widely booed at the 2024 Libertarian Party National Convention. Despite the support of many audience members, the jeers against Trump drowned out most of the positivity from the very beginning of his speech, with boos echoing throughout it.

The boos seemed to eventually get to Trump. Despite seeking their endorsement, he reacted to the series of jeers by saying, "You can keep going the way you have for the last long decades and get your 3% and meet again, get another 3%" (via NBC News). "You don't want to win," an exasperated Trump concluded after more boos (per PBS).

Donald Trump returned to the Al Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner for the 2024 campaign, and just like in 2016, his polarizing speech was met with boos from the upper-crust elites in the audience. His opponent in the presidential campaign, Kamala Harris, also received some boos upon the mention of her name — she did not attend the event in favor of campaigning in person elsewhere.

While Trump's speech was arguably more polished than his acidic 2016 remarks, he was still booed for some low blows, such as his critique of Harris' husband, Doug Emhoff, and his affair during his first marriage. Near the end of his speech, Trump seemed to address the jeers and the public reaction to him in general when he asked (via ABC News), "You think this is easy, standing up here, half a room that hates my guts and the other half loves me?"

In October 2024, Donald Trump was booed at yet another sporting event, boos that weren't completely commensurate to the aggression and enthusiasm of the sport itself — football. Nonetheless, some attendees of the NFL game between the New York Jets and the Pittsburgh Steelers made their opinion of Trump audibly clear when they booed him and yelled things like "Get him out of town!"

Just how widespread the booing actually was led to a bitter back-and-forth between liberals and conservatives online. Trump's campaign responded with a video showing members of the NFL crowd chanting, "U-S-A!" The liberal outlet Meidas Touch claimed that these chants were for a Navy SEAL who was being honored as part of the game.

Donald Trump has made MAGA-fying the Kennedy Center a priority during his second term as president, sparking backlash from artists and members of the Kennedys. That backlash was present during a Kennedy Center performance of "Les Misérables" attended by Trump and his wife.

While many MAGA loyalists cheered from the audience when Trump arrived, others loudly booed, with his name being cursed during the intermission (sparking supportive applause in response). More jeers were directed at Trump from a group of drag performers and others throughout the night.

Donald Trump has increased his ties to FIFA throughout his second term, receiving a ridiculed "peace prize" from them in 2025 and hosting the World Cup. He attended the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup final in New Jersey and was booed throughout the event, from the national anthem to the award ceremony.

Even the White House pool press report mentioned the widespread boos from the FIFA audience. Trump was also lampooned for his cringe-inducing behavior at the World Cup while presenting the trophy, standing in front of a star player and remaining on the stage with the winners long after he should've left. According to Time, even the team captain seemed to ask Trump, "Are you going to leave?"

Donald Trump continued to attend sporting events in 2025 despite being consistently met with boos, including at the usually timid and quiet U.S. Open. Trump was met with the typical mixture of cheers and jeers when he arrived at the tennis match, but received a massive amount of boos when his face appeared on the video screens of Arthur Ashe Stadium following the first set.

The booing was actually worse than things first appeared, though. That's because the United States Tennis Association instructed broadcasters not to show reactions to Trump, an act of censorship that was widely criticized. This only provoked a bigger response, with people sharing uncensored cell phone footage of the men's singles final with the unedited booing.

After Donald Trump occupied Washington, D.C., with the National Guard, he attempted to tout its increased safety by dining in public with several cabinet members. This slightly backfired when the restaurant they attended was infiltrated by a group of loud protesters from Code Pink, who stood near the president (and the many knives on tables throughout the eatery).

Members of Code Pink chanted, "Free D.C.! Free Palestine! Trump is the Hitler of our time!" One protester added, "He is terrorizing communities in D.C. He's terrorizing Gaza and communities all over the world."

Donald Trump may have hoped he'd receive fewer boos during a regular-season NFL game, but that certainly wasn't the case when he watched the Washington Commanders play the Detroit Lions. Trump was loudly booed whenever he appeared on the video monitors or became the center of attention, even when he read an oath for new military recruits to repeat.

It's no longer surprising that Trump would be publicly booed and shamed, and there doesn't really need to be any new reason for it. However, Washington Commanders fans may have been specifically mad at Trump after reports indicated that he wanted their football stadium to be named after him, just as he had done to the Kennedy Center. Expect more boos to come.