Canary in a coal mine
For me, one of the most shocking aspects of the Trump era has been the degree of support he’s received from wealthy—or aspiring-to-be-wealthy—people. These aren’t the voters who’ve been left behind economically that the media loves to highlight. Or the folks without a college degree who resent “elites” for looking down at them and either ignore Trump’s ignorance, bigotry, and incivility, or reframe it as welcome pugnaciousness on their behalf. No, these are highly educated elites, and as best I can tell, they presume that, whatever damage Trump may cause, they’ll be shielded from it. And in the meantime, they’ll enjoy lower taxes or less regulatory oversight or some other personal benefit.
If that’s the thinking, the debacle at this Sunday’s men’s final at the U.S. Open should be a canary-in-a-coal-mine moment for wealthy Trump supporters.
I’m not talking about the tennis, which was a great match between two great rivals, Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner. I’m referring to the lines and delays caused by Trump’s decision to attend, which pushed the start of the match back by more than forty-five minutes and left thousands of ticket holders still stuck outside when play began.
The U.S. Open is the last Grand Slam tournament in professional tennis each calendar year. Held at the end of the summer at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing, Queens, it has long been a fun, exciting event for dedicated tennis fans and casual viewers alike. However, in recent years, inflation in ticket prices has made the U.S. Open inaccessible for many people, especially in the final rounds. In the past, I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to afford to go, sometimes to matches as late as the quarter finals. But the cost of the men’s final has always been out of reach for me, and it’s just gotten more and more expensive. Sports Illustrated reported that for this year’s men’s final, prices on Ticketmaster ranged from $657 for a seat in an upper section to over $10,000 for any seat in a lower section to over $23,000 for a spot in section 31.
And that’s if you’re able to get a ticket at all. More and more, shots of the crowd at the finals show the celebrities attending, not “regular” tennis fans. The tournament’s website even crows about all the famous people in attendance. (This year, Bruce Springsteen, Kevin Hart, Martha Stewart, and Vera Wang were among the many celebrities who walked the U.S. Open’s 2025 “blue carpet.”) Like so many things, getting into Arthur Ashe Stadium for a marquee match has become a game of how important you are and who you know.
So, it must have been particularly galling for the well-connected, rich ticket holders to find themselves treated so badly when, at the last minute and with little advance notice, Trump decided to return to Queens for the men’s final. While he waved from the Rolex corporate box, a huge number of people who’d spent hundreds if not thousands of dollars to be there were forced to wait on long lines to get through the enhanced security required by a presidential visit and missed the start of the match even after it had been significantly delayed.
None of this is new, of course. We don’t need to read books or watch shows about the Gilded Age to know how the world works—life is different for rich people and always has been. But to me, the photo of Trump smiling and waving in the face of boos from the crowds (audible to the TV audience despite reports that the U.S. Tennis Association requested the networks not to highlight crowd reactions) is symbolic of what should be an important lesson for those Trump supporters I’ve never understood—you may be rich, but unless you’re “ultrawealthy” (or famous), your life may not be as secure under Trump as you want to believe.
Other evidence of the growing stratification between the rich and the really, really rich is not hard to find. No doubt much to Trump’s chagrin, today the New York Times published a long investigative piece on the relationship between his former friend Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender and accused human trafficker, and Epstein’s long-time bank, JPMorgan Chase. Among the many takeaways from that piece was how differently Epstein was treated—not just from other, “average” people, but also other wealthy clients of JPMorgan’s Private Bank. All those “know your customer” rules and other anti-money laundering requirements apparently don’t apply if you’re rich enough or connected to people who are rich enough no matter how heinous your alleged crimes may be.
People like me who abhor the Administration’s grotesque dismantling of so many of our cherished institutions, core legal principles, and important social conventions are often accused of overreacting, typically by those who have yet to experience any personal repercussions from Trump’s policies and actions. I’m not sure what the ultimate wake-up call for those people will be. But while photos of a bunch of tennis fans waiting in long security lines might seem like no big deal, they should be a warning sign. The personal repercussions are likely coming for all of us. We just don’t know how or when.
Photo credit: Cage for reviving canary, with oxygen cylinder, Science Museum Group Collection. ©The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum.