The Trump Files: Watch Donald Get Booed Mercilessly at Wrigley Field

Mother Jones illustration; Shutterstock

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

 

In case the election polls weren’t enough evidence that Donald Trump should probably stick to his day job, here’s more proof, just in time for the first World Series game at Chicago’s Wrigley Field since 1945. The TV station WGN, famous as the broadcasting home of the Chicago Cubs, unearthed a video last week of Trump at Wrigley Field singing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game”—very, very badly.

It’s a Wrigley tradition to have guests lead the crowd in “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” during the seventh-inning stretch, and on July 9, 2000, it was Trump’s turn. “We hear ‘The Donald’ practiced for two weeks leading up to his appearance here and was very confident he would bring the house down,” reported the Chicago Tribune. Whatever practicing he did, it didn’t help. Trump’s shouty, off-key rendition was practically drowned out by boos before it was halfway through. (You can’t quite hear if Melania, standing next to him, did any better.) As Deadspin accurately put it, “He sounds like shit.”

To be fair, Hillary Clinton didn’t get much better treatment when she sang at Wrigley as first lady in 1994. According to the Tribune, “boos rang out when she was introduced, and a plane flying overhead pulled a sign reading, ‘Hillary, U have the right to remain silent,’ a reference to the Whitewater affair.”

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate