During Barack Obama’s presidency, he’d work with ESPN every year to set up a terrible NCAA March Madness bracket that he would then try to defend on television. It was a fun, lighthearted tradition, designed to show that Obama could connect with the common man, but it looks like it won’t be continuing in Donald Trump’s administration. As announced on ESPN’s website, Trump declined an offer to do the bracket thing with the network, and White House spokesperson Hope Hicks released a statement saying that they “look forward to working with ESPN on another opportunity in the near future.”
Rolling Stone offers some theories about why Trump might not want to do it, specifically guessing that he was either too afraid to lose or that he’s simply too busy “dealing with the mounting controversies plaguing his administration.” Both of those seem pretty pretty believable—because you know the failing and biased media would have a field day if he made bad picks—but we have a third theory: If Trump put together an NCAA bracket, he’d end up getting every winner correct, and then we’d all find out about the Grays Sports Almanac that his future self gave him all those years ago.
Or maybe Donald Trump just doesn’t watch basketball, because he has no idea how to connect with the common man.