WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s low-profile appearance Sunday night at Game 5 of the World Series came at a high-profile moment of his presidency. Yet he still drew loud boos and jeers when introduced to the Washington crowd.
Wearing a dark suit and a tie, Trump arrived at Nationals Park just before the first pitch of the Houston Astros-Washington Nationals matchup. Hours earlier, he had announced that U.S. forces had assaulted the hiding place of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was killed in the raid in northeast Syria.
A military success against a most-wanted enemy of the U.S. and its allies could have provided the president a rare moment of bipartisan comity, especially amid a divisive impeachment inquiry.
Trump and first lady Melania Trump entered a lower-tier box to the left of home plate as the game got under way. At that point his presence wasn’t formally announced, but baseball fans in the section just below Trump’s suite turned to look toward the box as he arrived. Some waved at the president as he smiled and gave a thumbs-up.
At the end of the third inning, ballpark video screens carried a salute to U.S. service members that drew cheers throughout the stadium. When the video cut to Trump and his entourage and the loudspeakers announced the Trumps, cheers abruptly turned into a torrent of boos and heckling. Chants of “Lock him up!” broke out in some sections.
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The nation’s capital has become ever more a Democratic city less tolerant of Republicans, and its newspaper, the Washington Post, has been relentlessly anti-Trump.
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An earlier post:
No Warm Welcome to Washington for You, Mr. Trump
The Washington Post today suggested that 10-year-old Barron Trump might be better off staying in his private school in New York City rather than moving to Washington where he might find some “social bumps” in schools such as Sidwell Friends, the private school attended by the two Obama daughters and Chelsea Clinton.
The Washingtonian was even more direct with a we-don’t-want-you-here piece by senior editor Marisa Kashino, who wrote, “I don’t want Donald Trump to be my neighbor, and I don’t want him to be my neighbors’ neighbor. The 96 percent of District residents who did not vote for him ostensibly feel the same.”
A very reluctant welcome to Washington, Mr. President.
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The District of Columbia, with just over 600,000 Trump-hating residents, actually is only 10 percent of the Washington metro area population of about 6 million. Maybe the president-elect will be treated better in the suburbs than in DC?
In Fairfax County, the biggest suburban area in Northern Virginia, Donald Trump got 29 percent of the vote, Hillary Clinton got 65 percent. That 65 is up from the 47 percent Al Gore got in 2000. In 16 years, Fairfax County went from a 50-50 split to two-thirds Democratic even though the vote totals nationwide stayed about the same, with the Democratic candidate barely winning the popular vote but losing in the electoral college in both 2000 and 2016.
In Alexandria and Arlington, just across the Potomac River from DC, Clinton got 77 percent of the vote in both places. In 2000, Gore got 60 percent of the vote in Arlington and 68 percent in Alexandria.
In Montgomery County, the upscale county adjoining DC in Maryland, Hillary Clinton got 76 percent of the vote this year. That’s up from the 62 percent Al Gore got in 2000. And it’s way up from the 40 percent that incumbent President Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, got in 1980.
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Why has the nation’s capital become more Democratic and less welcoming to Republicans? The old conventional wisdom has been that Republicans come to Washington when they win an election but go home when they lose, while Democrats never leave.
Maybe it’s also because it’s ever easier for Democrats to find work. Federal spending has gone from $2.2 trillion in 2000 to $3.9 trillion this year, and Washington is ever more anxious to help the rest of the country decide on everything from what restroom you can use to what your neighborhood school can teach.
Here’s the Washington Post story on the booing of President Trump at the World Series game.:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nationals/president-trump-attends-game-5-of-the-world-series-at-nationals-park/2019/10/27/ccee6622-f91d-11e9-8906-ab6b60de9124_story.html
In his semi-autobiography, or whatever, with Sidney Zion, Roy Cohn said Richard Nixon was the only president he saw get cheered at a ballpark.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2019/10/28/history-booing-president-mlb-games-we-want-beer-lock-him-up/?tid=lk_interstitial_manual_9