I am the man who put Donald Trump on the Madison Square Garden videoboard during the national anthem at Game 3 of the NBA Finals, and I want you to understand that I did it on purpose, with a joystick, the way you'd guide a drone into a hornet's nest you built yourself. I run the board. I am the board. Forty feet of LED above center court and I decide what twenty thousand people look at, which means tonight I decided what twenty thousand people would feel, and I felt it land in my own chest a half-second before it hit theirs because I am the only person in this building who knows the sound is coming before the sound comes. I cut to the suite. I framed him dead center, presidential, the first sitting president ever at an NBA Finals, and I held it, and I have never been more sober in my life, I have not had so much as a beer, the network does not let me, and that is the problem, because sober is the worst possible state in which to hear what I heard. The boo. Not a boo. The boo. Twenty thousand human throats finding the same note without rehearsing it, a chord nobody conducted, the building itself growling through my speakers which are technically my speakers, I run those too, and underneath it, threading through it like a man trying to start a lawnmower at a funeral, a "USA" chant, somebody's lonely "USA, USA," and the two sounds wrestling in the air I am responsible for, and me up in the booth thinking, with total clarity, I did this, I made the room make this sound, this is the loudest thing I have ever built and it is made entirely of strangers disagreeing about a man on a screen I aimed. He salutes. On my board. Forty feet of salute. And here is where my hands start doing the thing, not shaking, worse, working, perfectly, twelve years of muscle memory operating the joystick while the rest of me has left to go stand at the back of my own skull and scream, because I am framing the salute beautifully, I am giving the salute the heroic low angle, I am the best in the league at the heroic low angle, and the better I frame it the louder they boo, and the louder they boo the more the broadcast loves it, my producer in my ear going THAT'S IT HOLD IT HOLD IT, and I hold it, I always hold it, holding it is the entire job. Nobody up here is on anything. I need you to know that. We are stone sober in the booth, eating the same cold arena pretzel we eat every night, and we are manufacturing the single most charged human moment in America tonight with the same six joysticks we use for the kiss cam. The kiss cam. I want to lie down. The same rig that finds two strangers and makes them kiss for a laugh, I just used to find a president and make a building roar, and the rig does not know the difference, the rig has no politics, the rig serves the boo and the cheer with the exact same obedient little servo whine, and so do I, God help me, so do I. Here's the part. After. When they cut to commercial and the roar drains out and the game comes back and everyone forgets, the moment doesn't belong to him and it doesn't belong to them. It's mine. It's in my board's memory. I made twenty thousand people feel the realest thing they'll feel all week and it was a camera move. It was a camera move I practiced. I didn't film the moment. I aimed it. And tomorrow there's a hockey game, and I'll aim that too, and the building will roar for something else, and it will be just as real, and I will be just as sober, and I will hold it. I always hold it.