When President Donald Trump walked into the arena for UFC 327 in Miami, the moment was captured by Fox News cameras. According to sources, viewers watching at home noticed something was off: the audio had been cut, leaving the crowd’s reaction a mystery. For those who were actually at the event, there was no mystery at all.
Fox News posted a silent clip of Trump’s entrance to X, prompting scrutiny from users who suspected the network was deliberately concealing unflattering crowd noise.
“Kinda weird that there’s no sound in this video. Is Trump getting booed?” one X user asked beneath the post.
Others were less restrained in their suspicion. “Why no volume of the crowd booing in the back?” another wrote.
A third user commented: “Why did Fox News mute the audio of Trump walking out to UFC 327?”
The answer, according to those who were actually on the arena floor, was different. MMA commentator Luke Thomas reached out to two journalist contacts who had been present at the event.
“I asked two different journalist friends who were on the floor out there, who I trust a lot, what was their impression about when he walked out,” Thomas explained in a recent video. “These are not people that are all that genuinely politically involved.”
What they described was not a chorus of loud disapproval, but something arguably more telling. “The reaction that they both said was that, you know, was there a smattering of boos? Maybe. There was also some cheers, but the big takeaway that they had was that it was noticeably quieter,” Thomas said.
Thomas explained the muted response of the crowd. “For a guy who used to get thunderous applause, to be greeted with, you know, not exactly indifference, that’s not quite right either, but something like protest via silence,” he observed.
He continued: “Most people, it turned out, couldn’t bring themselves to boo Trump necessarily, although again there was some of that. But what they did bring themselves to is, you know what, man, I’m just not, I’m not with it. I’m not going to cheer. That’s what you got.”
Thomas noted that Trump’s appearances on the in-arena screens later in the evening told a similar story. “There were subsequent times he was shown on camera when they were going through and showing all the celebrities who were in attendance, and he got a little bit of a pop there, but the fighters got bigger pops. Jon Jones got a bigger pop.”
Acknowledging the conflicting reports circulating after the event, Thomas was deliberate about not overstating what the reception signified. “I have seen people claim just about anything. I’ve seen them claim he got showered with boos. I’ve seen them claim that Fox News was trying to say he got greeted with thunderous applause. I’ve seen everything kind of in between,” he said.
He was equally careful not to read too far into the implications: “We should not confuse that with thinking that the audience is all of a sudden going to be talking about woke intersectionality and the problem of monopoly. But nevertheless, they have soured on Donald Trump in particular.”
The subdued reception stands in sharp contrast to Trump’s previous appearances at UFC events. Longtime Trump ally and UFC CEO Dana White had confirmed ahead of the evening, during an online broadcast with internet personality Adin Ross, that the president would be in attendance.
Just one year earlier, at a UFC event also held in Miami, Trump had been greeted with loud applause and chants of “USA!” He also attended UFC 302 in Newark, New Jersey, in June 2024, shortly after his conviction on 34 felony counts of fraud for falsifying business records related to a payment made to adult film star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 presidential election. Despite that conviction, he received a warm welcome in Newark and went on to win the 2024 presidential election, returning to the White House.
UFC 327 marks the first major sporting event Trump has attended since announcing the launch of a joint U.S.-Israeli military campaign against Iran at the end of February. Trump’s domestic approval ratings have since declined to record lows.
