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Washington Post  —  It appears that President Trump is passing on March Madness. He will not continue his predecessor’s annual tradition of filling out an NCAA tournament bracket on ESPN.

The network reached out to Trump’s staff and invited the president to fill out a bracket on-camera, just as President Barack Obama had the past several years. The network recently received word that Trump has passed. An ESPN spokesman said in a statement: “We expressed our interest to the White House in continuing the presidential bracket. They have respectfully declined.”

A spokesman told The Post in December that ESPN would extend an invite Trump to continue the tradition, but Andy Katz, the ESPN basketball analyst who conceived the idea and walked Obama through the bracket explained at the time that “the bracket idea worked because President Obama follows basketball and is passionate about the sport.

“He wasn’t as dialed in to every player or team but had conversational knowledge to offer his own analysis on the NCAA tournament for the men’s and women’s game. Baracketology was a success because it was clear he was a fan of the sport and the NCAA tournament, like millions of other Americans,” Katz said.

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Look, if you’re surprised in any way by this news then you haven’t been living on planet earth. The number one most recognized trait about Trump is that he “loves winning”. Some would say he’s a thin-skinned, insecure narcissist. I’m not saying that. I’m just telling you many people have said that. Many people. Trust me.

The flip side of that “love of winning” is that Trump refuses to open himself up to the possibility of being wrong. If there’s no way to spin it — like, say, calling the election rigged when it looked like he might lose the election — he’s taking no chances. So when it comes to a sporting event… a contest where there is a clear winner and a clear loser… he won’t choose a side. He won’t open himself up to the ridicule of having picked a loser.

So it comes as no surprise that Trump wimped out of releasing a Bracket on national television. Sixty three selections? Sixty three opportunities for someone to say Trump picked a loser? Trump and his team can spin a lot of things. They can’t spin that an entire basketball tournament was rigged against Trump. I mean they could try. But not even the blindest Trump supporter would buy it.

And you know what the best part is? Nobody in the world would actually care that he picked a loser. This isn’t an election. This isn’t a real world conflict. This isn’t even a one-game event where you could say the fix was in.

THIS IS MARCH MADNESS.

You literally can not have a perfect bracket. Pools are won by office secretaries who don’t know Syracuse from Santa Monica and aunts who pick the prettier name. Three years ago I got ballsy and thought I’d pick Iowa State to win it all. They lost the second game of the entire tournament on Thursday afternoon. It’s such a crapshoot that you’re better off flipping a coin on every selection than they are using empirical data. The smartest basketball minds from advanced statisticians to “feel of the game” coaches have no better a chance than your six-year-old cousin. There’s not a man or woman alive who could call someone a loser for not picking the perfect bracket, and that’s only in small part due to the fact that it’s basically impossible to do so. There’s a better chance I survive shooting myself in the face than there is that a human being picks the perfect bracket.

And yet Donald Trump is such a humongous pussy (sorry, locker room talk) that he won’t take 30 minutes to fill out a bracket in a pre-taped segment. He won’t risk being called a loser for not getting every game right. Not only is it cowardly… it’s un-American.

 

Now you can go ahead and jump on your soap box about how filling out a bracket is stupid. You can be that guy who say “I stopped that years ago man it’s pointless” or “I just want to watch the games and root for the underdog”. That’s fine. I get it. I hate you, but I get where you’re coming from. Donald Trump is not coming from there. Donald Trump was the guy who filled out or pretended to fill out a bracket but never submitted it anywhere so that he could just keep saying “I called that in my bracket” for every game. He’s the “I went 15-1 today. Lost one on a lucky buzzer beater” guy who doesn’t have his bracket to show you. And now that his bracket would be public knowledge, he’s outright refusing to do one.

It all goes back to what I wrote just this morning in the McMahon family picture blog. Trump is so afraid to let himself ever look bad or look like he’s losing that he ends up looking bad all the time. Not filling out a bracket is such a cowardly move… such an un-American move… that it’s a borderline impeachable action.

What a pussy.

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P.S.   As a fan of a good spin zone I am curious to see what the excuse here is. I don’t think anyone is lame enough to go with “he’s focusing all his time on fixing the country”. But if they do, 1) It takes maybe 30 minutes and 2) he’s been President for four weekend now and spent three of those at his Mar-A-Lago country club splitting time between watching cable news and golfing.

So what’s it going to be? ESPN is too liberal? Basketball is too diverse? The NCAA is corrupt? Very curious to find out.

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