President Trump greeted with mostly boos, some cheers at Commanders-Lions game

LANDOVER, Md. — President Donald Trump, standing next to Washington Commanders owner Josh Harris and House Speaker Mike Johnson, waved to a sellout crowd from the owner’s suite at Northwest Stadium amid a chorus of mostly boos mixed with some cheers Sunday evening.

Trump arrived at the stadium near the end of the second quarter of the Commanders’ meeting with the Detroit Lions, who had already jumped to a double-digit lead on the way to a 44-22 victory. Air Force One conducted a flyover during the first quarter before landing at Joint Base Andrews.

“I just want to say, was that the greatest flyover ever?” Trump told reporters awaiting his arrival at the base. “Nobody’s ever done a flyover like that, so these are the best pilots in the world. They say whoever flies Air Force One … the best pilots, and we just saw that. So we’re going to have a good game.”

At halftime, Trump went into a broadcast booth to read the oath of enlistment for new service members who were honored on the field.

Fans in the lower bowl of the stadium and in nearby suites snapped photos and took video of the president as the boos grew louder.

The crowd reaction to Donald Trump pic.twitter.com/2NTEZ6cskb

— Nicki Jhabvala (@NickiJhabvala) November 9, 2025

In the third quarter, Trump joined Fox’s Jonathan Vilma and Kenny Albert for an interview during a Commanders scoring drive.

“I will say that your second-string, your backup quarterback, is a good quarterback and he’s had some very good games for you,” Trump said of Marcus Mariota, Washington’s backup, who started on Sunday. “And your first-string quarterback (Jayden Daniels) has the potential to be a great quarterback. He’s got to stop the injuries somehow.”

Unsolicited, Trump brought up the Commanders’ new stadium, which will be built on the site of the former RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C.

“By the way, they’re going to build a beautiful stadium,” Trump told Vilma and Albert. “That’s what I’m involved in. We’re getting all the approvals and everything else. And you have a wonderful owner, Josh and his group. And you’re going to see some wonderful things.”

Commanders ownership anticipated having conversations with Trump about the team’s new stadium during his appearance at the game, following an ESPN report Saturday morning that said “there have been back-channel communications with a member of the Commanders’ ownership group” about Trump’s desire to have the stadium named after him.

But no formal request was made to Commanders ownership before Sunday’s game, according to a team source who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter. And no mention of the stadium name was made during Trump’s interview.

When contacted for comment on Saturday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt responded by email: “That would surely be a beautiful name, as it was President Trump who made the rebuilding of the new stadium possible,” reiterating what she told ESPN.

The Commanders learned of Trump’s plans to attend the game only last week, another source said.

Along with Trump, multiple top military personnel, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, were at Sunday’s game and met with Harris and his family on the field during pregame warmups.

Pete Hegseth arrives at Northwest Stadium@JPFinlayNBCS #RaiseHail #Commanders pic.twitter.com/Rh6Zu0hB2y

— NBC4 Sports (@NBC4Sports) November 9, 2025

Trump, Johnson and several cabinet officials sat in the owner’s suite with Harris on the second level of the stadium, at the 50-yard line. In preparation for his visit, the first row of the suite was removed to install a wall of bulletproof glass.

One Secret Service member at the stadium said approximately 100 of them were deployed for Trump’s appearance at the game. A few were stationed outside the owner’s suite at least four hours before kickoff.

Lions receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown pointed to the stadium suites and did a Trump-inspired celebration after a first-half touchdown catch.

Touchdown Amon-Ra St. Brown!@Lions extend their lead

📺: FOX pic.twitter.com/auCwjQVmaX

— FOX Sports: NFL (@NFLonFOX) November 9, 2025

Trump became the first sitting U.S. president to attend a regular-season NFL game in 47 years and the first ever at Northwest Stadium. But it was not his first NFL game — he was also at  Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans in February — and certainly not his first sporting event since returning to the White House. He’s also attended multiple UFC fights, the Daytona 500, the FIFA Club World Cup final at MetLife Stadium, the U.S. Open men’s tennis final and the Ryder Cup, among others.

The Commanders’ $3.8 billion deal to build a roofed stadium and accompanying mixed-used development was approved by the D.C. Council in September. The stadium is slated to break ground next year and open in 2030.

The deal was the result of years of lobbying by the team’s current regime and multiple previous failed attempts by the team under former owner Daniel Snyder. When Snyder sold the team to Harris in 2023 for $6.05 billion, discussions with local officials about a new stadium — be it in Maryland, Virginia or D.C. — started anew.

The move back to D.C. was fraught with hurdles, none bigger than the fact that the land on which RFK Stadium sits is owned by the federal government. The District’s lease was set to expire in 2038 and allowed only certain uses for development.

That changed in 2024 when Congress passed legislation, signed by then-President Joe Biden, that allowed D.C. to control the land for up to 99 years and expanded the types of development allowed so the city could build a mixed-use development with affordable housing.

Air Force One flies over Northwest Stadium during the first quarter of a Commanders-Lions game. (Geoff Burke / Imagn Images)

The city is contributing more than $1 billion in public funds for the project, while the team is investing $2.7 billion, plus the cost of any overruns. The Commanders, as master developers, will pay for the stadium’s construction, but the city will own it and lease it back to the team for $1 per year.

The team, however, has exclusive rights to sell and receive all revenue from a naming rights sponsorship for the stadium, a lucrative source of funding for many sports stadiums to help offset construction and maintenance costs.

The finance company SoFi, for example, will pay $625 million in a 20-year deal for naming rights to the Los Angeles Chargers’ and Rams’ stadium. Intuit, a financial software company, agreed to pay $500 million for a 23-year naming rights deal for the Clippers’ arena in L.A. And Allegiant Air is reportedly paying $20 million to $25 million a year for naming rights to the Las Vegas Raiders’ stadium, which opened in 2020.

In May, Trump announced during a White House press conference with Harris, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and D.C. Mayor E. Muriel Bowser, that Washington will host the 2027 NFL Draft, one of the league’s tentpole events that Harris believes will draw more than a million people to the capital.

Months later, Trump threatened to hinder the Commanders’ plans to build a new stadium in D.C. unless they changed their name back to Redskins, which had been denounced as a racist slur. The franchise switched to Commanders in 2022 after temporarily being known as the Washington Football Team.