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WASHINGTON — Baseball fans jeered President Donald Trump when he was introduced at Game 5 of the World Series, and many chanted “Lock him up!”
The president and first lady Melania Trump brought along a dozen Republican lawmakers, including four Texans.
They arrived without fanfare but when the president was introduced in the fourth inning, cheers were drowned out by boos. Fans hung a large “Impeach Trump!” banner, and behind home plate, two men displayed a “Veterans for impeachment” sign.
Rep John Ratcliffe, one of Trump’s most vocal defenders in the impeachment inquiry, stood nearby during the prolonged chorus of boos.
He and the Trumps could be seen smiling broadly and clapping through the taunts.
Trump also brought along Reps. Kay Granger of Fort Worth, Mac Thornberry of Clarendon, and Kevin Brady of The Woodlands, just north of Houston—the only one of the four whose constituents are likely Astros fans.
The “lock him up!” chant sparked a fierce debate on social media.
Trump appears at least twice a month at large campaign rallies but his appearance at Nationals Park marked an exceedingly rare instance of an appearance before a crowd that wasn’t stocked with supporters.
His defenders saw a mob mentality, with Washingtonians —perhaps with ties to the so-called “Deep State” entrenched bureaucracy — joining the “witch hunt” against him and falling for a false narrative peddled by Democrats searching for a way to depose him unfairly.
Trump’s critics saw Americans ironically throwing the president’s baseless taunts of Hillary Clinton, and the chants of “Lock her up!” that he led and encouraged during the 2016 election and at rallies since his election, in his face.
Trump considered Ratcliffe for attorney general last summer. He’s a former U.S. attorney, and serves on the Intelligence Committee — one of three panels investigating allegations the president withheld nearly $400 million in military aid to pressure Ukraine to announced a corruption probe aimed at tarnishing Democratic front-runner Joe Biden.
Brady spearheaded Trump’s major domestic legislative achievement, the 2017 tax cut package, as chairman of the tax writing Ways and Means Committee, where he’s now the ranking member — the senior lawmaker on the minority side.
He’s also an avid baseball fan. He played varsity baseball at the University of South Dakota in Vermillion and has long been a stalwart on the GOP team for the annual congressional charity game, where he’s been known for aggressive base running and head first slides.
Granger is the senior Republican on the Appropriations Committee, which controls billions in federal spending —a powerful post regardless of the fact that Republicans are in the minority.
In fact, Granger endorsed Jeb Bush in the 2016 primaries. And when the Access Hollywood tape surfaced a month before Election Day, with Trump making lewd boasts about sexual assaults, Granger—the only Republican woman from Texas in Congress—called on him to step aside as the GOP nominee for president.
Thornberry is a former chairman of the Armed Services Committee and now, after the Democrats regained the majority in last year’s elections, its senior Republican.
He is one of six GOP incumbents in Texas who have already announced retirement as part of a wave of departures Democrats have dubbed the “Texodus.”
On Sunday morning, Trump announced that U.S. special forces had tracked down ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and confirmed his death after he detonated a suicide vest.
Afterward on CNN, Thornberry said that “I think that was the most effusive I have ever heard the president in talking about our military and intelligence professionals.”
He averred that Trump’s explicit descriptions of how Baghdadi died made him “a little uncomfortable….. But, again, Baghdadi was the inspirational leader for an ISIS network across the world from Africa to Southeast Asia. If you can take a little of the glamour off you, if you can make him less inspirational, then there’s a value to that.”
The other lawmakers the president invited to the game, according to the White House, were Sens. Lindsey Graham and David Perdue, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and GOP whip Steve Scalise, and GOP conference chair Liz Cheney — the three of the top four Republicans in the House — along with Mark Meadows, Andy Biggs and Matt Gaetz.
Gaetz if the Florida Republican who led a sit-in to disrupt a deposition and delay the impeachment inquiry last week.