President Donald Trump’s two-day swing through the sports calendar ended with an obscenity shouted from the gallery, as an unidentified heckler accused the 80-year-old president of being a pedophile during a live broadcast of the Presidents Cup in Medinah, Ill., on Sunday, Sept. 27, 2026.
Trump had just stepped forward alongside PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp, the two men posing beside the Presidents Cup trophy, when a voice carried over the microphones.
“You’re a f—ing pedophile, Donald!” the man was heard shouting.
Other spectators answered with a round of whooping. Trump stared ahead and gave no sign of acknowledging the commotion.
A Mixed Reception at Medinah
Until that point, the president’s appearance in the Chicago suburb had looked like the friendlier of his two weekend outings. He was met with cheers and chants of “USA” as he delivered his remarks, and he opened by assessing his own welcome.
“You know, the fake news media will say I got a very bad reception,” the president said.
The overall crowd response was more complicated than that. Reaction to his arrival was mixed, with quite a few loud boos audible at the course. Patrick Fazio, a reporter with NBC Chicago, shared footage of the reception.
The visit reshaped the day for everyone else on the grounds. Gates at Medinah Country Club opened to spectators at 8 a.m., with the president not due until the tournament’s closing ceremony around 11 a.m. Air Force One could be seen flying over the course beforehand. Additional security restrictions were imposed because of the trip, including TSA-style screening checkpoints around the first tee grandstand and the surrounding areas, and organizers urged fans to keep personal items to a minimum and to allow extra travel time. Several protests took place around the visit.
The matches were played at Medinah Country Club’s Course No. 3. The Presidents Cup pits the United States against the rest of the world, excluding Europe, and the International team carried a lead over the Americans into Sunday’s session.
Booed a Day Earlier in Knoxville
The golf tournament was the president’s second major sporting event in as many days. On Saturday, Sept. 26, he took in the heavily hyped meeting between the Tennessee Volunteers and the top-ranked Texas Longhorns at Neyland Stadium in Knoxville, Tenn. When his image went up on the Jumbotron, he was loudly booed inside one of the reddest states in the country.
Epstein Questions Trail the President
Hecklers have become a fixture of Trump’s public appearances, and many of the interruptions have centered on his past friendship with Jeffrey Epstein and on his push to keep the full trove of Epstein files from being released.
In July, a man at a rally at a General Motors facility in Michigan repeatedly shouted that the president was a protector of pedophiles, prompting Trump to fire back that the heckler was a communist. At a rally at a Mack Trucks factory in Pennsylvania in June, a protester raised his middle finger at the president and repeatedly called him a pedophile.
Trump was close friends for years with Epstein, who died in prison in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. Pressed on the accusation in an April interview, the president told CBS News anchor Norah O’Donnell, “I’m not a pedophile.”
Public skepticism has not eased. A Reuters/Ipsos survey conducted in June found that just 10 percent of Americans — and only 21 percent of Republicans — believe the Trump administration has helped efforts to hold Epstein’s alleged associates accountable, while 47 percent said the administration has hurt those efforts. Three in four respondents said they believe the federal government is hiding information about Epstein’s alleged clients.