President Trump appears at 2025 NCAA Wrestling Championships, where Penn State won team title

President Donald Trump made an appearance Saturday night at the 2025 NCAA Wrestling Championships in Philadelphia, marking the second time since October that Trump has attended an event with Nittany Lions wrestlers.

Trump’s planned appearance at the Wells Fargo Center — where billionaire Elon Musk and Sen. Dave McCormick, R-Pa., joined him — came during the final session of the NCAA championships when the individual national title winners were determined. Seconds after the first bout, Trump appeared on the Jumbotron to a mixture of cheers and boos and waved to the crowd as he walked to his seat.

Trump’s visit came hours after Penn State clinched the national team title Saturday morning. It was the Nittany Lions’ 12th national championship since 2011, and his introduction came moments after Penn State’s Carter Starocci won an unprecedented fifth title.

Trump, who didn’t address the public or media Saturday, had plenty to say about the Penn State wrestling team when he appeared in Happy Valley on Oct. 26 for a campaign rally. Maybe the largest roar from the crowd that fall came when he invited 14 current and former PSU wrestlers to the stage.

“We’re getting to the end and we’re leading in all the polls, so that’s a good thing. We better keep it going like your wrestling team,” Trump said in October from the Bryce Jordan Center, before winning the election.

He told the Penn State crowd back then that he wanted them to “dream big, just like your wrestling team dreams big.” He also remarked on how he likes “winners” such as Penn State wrestling and joked the platform they were standing on couldn’t hold them “because that’s a lot of muscle.”

Organizers for the 2025 NCAA Wrestling Championships warned both fans and the media about the potential for longer lines and waits to get into the arena Saturday. The Secret Service arrived late Friday night to sweep the arena, and vehicles parking close to the facility Saturday were forced to stop for inspections.

When asked about the presidential visit Friday, ahead of Trump’s appearance, Penn State wrestler Mitchell Mesenbrink labeled it “really, really cool.”

“If you put politics aside, no matter if you’re conservative or liberal or whatever, to have the President of the United States be at something we want to get people to watch ... I think that’s cool,” Mesenbrink said during a press conference. “And I think, if it was a conservative or liberal, it would be really, really cool.

“Democrat or Republican, whoever it is, it’s the President of the United States — the leader of the free world — at our wrestling event. That’s really cool when you think about it that way.”

This is not the first time Trump has attended sporting events as a sitting president, and he’s been no stranger to attending combat events through the years. He attended at least five UFC matches since his first term ended, and he became the first sitting U.S. president to attend a UFC event in 2019.

Trump also became the first sitting U.S. president to attend a Super Bowl, as he watched the Philadelphia Eagles beat the Kansas City Chiefs in February from New Orleans. He last attended the NCAA Wrestling Championships when they were in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 2023.

More than five dozen schools and 300 wrestlers took part in this year’s three-day tournament. And Trump’s visit came two days after signing an executive order to begin dismantling the Department of Education, which raises questions about the future of federal student aid and other essential programs.

Less than two weeks ago, the Trump administration also warned about 60 universities — a number of which were represented at the NCAA Wrestling Championships — that they could face penalties based on investigations into antisemitism on campus. Trump had previously said schools allowing “illegal protests” could see their funding halted.

This story was originally published March 22, 2025 at 7:53 PM.

Josh Moyer

Centre Daily Times

Josh Moyer earned his B.A. in journalism from Penn State and his M.S. from Columbia. He’s been involved in sports and news writing for more than 20 years. He counts the best athlete he’s ever seen as Tecmo Super Bowl’s Bo Jackson.