Donald Trump booed at World Series baseball game as crowd chants: ‘Lock him up’

White House has gone out of the way to shield president from protests and demonstrators in the past

Officials thought Trump’s earlier announcement about death of Isis leader Baghdadi might temper some of the heckling by liberal Washington crowd

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US President Donald Trump (centre), first lady Melania Trump and Republican lawmakers react as the stadium boos when the president is shown on the jumbo screen at the World Series game at Nationals Park in Washington on Sunday. Photo: AP

Published: 4:58am, 29 Oct 2019Updated: 5:38am, 29 Oct 2019

The boos were loud. And for US President Donald Trump, they may have felt unfamiliar.

Trump was showered with jeers, boos and chants (as well as some cheers) when he attended a World Series game at Nationals Park in Washington on Sunday night. It was a rare moment of in-your-face disapproval for a president whose White House goes out of the way to shield him from protests and demonstrators.

Since taking office, Trump has rarely ventured out to places in the deeply Democratic city or elsewhere that might feature high-volume hostility or a cold shoulder.

When the boos began as Trump’s image flashed on the ballpark’s giant video screen, the president seemed momentarily taken aback.

He mouthed something to his wife, Melania Trump, while gamely trying to clap along. But his smile froze and then faded as the boos continued and some in the crowd launched into a brief chant of “Lock him up”, a version of the phrase chanted against Hillary Clinton at dozens of Trump rallies during the 2016 campaign and at the Republican National Convention.