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There was reason to believe the reception would be even worse. After all, Trump was booed loudly the last time he attended the Open in 2015, when he was a still-largely dismissed candidate. Now a second-term president, Trump’s standing among Open-goers, not unlike the electorate, has improved in the intervening years.
Tennis’ final major of the year –– a magnet for New York’s power centers of business, media and entertainment –– is the type of A-list, culturally liberal gathering that Trump used to frequent. He was a regular at the Open for years, before he started wearing red baseball caps.
Now, with much of the celebrity and entertainment world still at odds with Trump, the tournament represents a bastion of Trump’s pre-MAGA era. (A Fox News headline over the weekend summed up the dynamic: “Left-leaning Hollywood elite flock to US Open with Trump set to attend men’s final.”) One recent poll found that, although sports fans generally lean right, tennis fans tilt liberal.
The scene at Arthur Ashe last Sunday suggested that Trump was entering the lion’s den. On that afternoon, fans showered the embattled late night host and Trump scourge Stephen Colbert with a rapturous ovation.
During changeovers at Ashe, luminaries seated in courtside boxes and luxury suites are shown on the video boards inside the stadium; unlike Trump, most are received warmly. Shonda Rimes, Jon Bon Jovi, Hugh Jackman and newly enshrined baseball hall of famer CC Sabathia each drew applause commensurate with their stature and public standing.
But there was something extra in the ovation for Colbert, who is in his final season as host of The Late Show after CBS announced in July that it will be canceling the program. The network insists the decision is purely a financial one, but to many –– including, presumably, fans at the US Open that day –– it seemed politically motivated, with Colbert serving as a sacrificial lamb in order to secure a merger between Skydance and Paramount, which have formed CBS’s new parent company. (The Federal Communications Commission approved the merger a week after CBS said it is pulling the plug on The Late Show.)
The acclaim for Colbert at the Open last week felt more like an expression of solidarity than simply an assertion of fandom. It was the ideological inverse to the hero’s welcome Trump received at a UFC event in New Jersey in 2024, two days after he was convicted of 34 felony counts.
UFC, of course, is a pillar of the ubermasculine culture that Trump has exploited to tremendous political effect. He has drawn from a similar well of support within the frat boy world of college football. Those sports –– favored by Trump-friendly personalities such as Joe Rogan, Theo Von and Dave Portnoy –– have become central components of the MAGA brand. The Open, on the other hand, represents a link to a time before Trump became the Republican standard-bearer, when he was more identified with The Apprentice than politics and still mostly embraced by the Hollywood set.
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Tom Kludt
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