‘Where are the women’s teams?’: Trump ignores women’s champions in White House sports ceremonies

Washington Compost ^ | March 4, 2019 | David Nakamura

[EdnaMode]

President Trump on Monday became the first president since Bill Clinton to play host to a college football team that won a title in the NCAA’s secondary division when he feted the North Dakota State Bison at the White House.

Trump surprised the squad with a spread of fast-food sandwiches in the East Room, posed for pictures and accepted a jersey emblazoned with the number 45.

The affair has become a presidential tradition since Ronald Reagan began hosting championship teams in the 1980s. But while Trump went out of his way to shine a light on a team that toils outside the big-money Division I programs, his personal attention to the Bison stood in contrast to the cold shoulder the White House has given to female athletes.

Not a single women’s championship team has made a solo visit to the White House under Trump, although several women’s teams participated in an event in 2017 during which Trump celebrated numerous men’s and women’s college champions in nonrevenue sports.

The past two WNBA champions, the Minnesota Lynx in 2017 and the Seattle Storm in 2018, were not invited.

Nor was the Notre Dame women’s basketball team, which won the NCAA title in 2018 before a crowd of 19,599 — more than the number, 17,802, who attended North Dakota’s football title game in January.

“Where are the women’s teams?” USA Today columnist Christine Brennan, who has written extensively about women’s sports, said in an interview. “To me this is just a huge step backward and shows he’s completely out of touch with how the nation views women’s sports.”

[lepton]

shows he’s completely out of touch with how the nation views women’s sports.”

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Really? Sounds more like he’s being accused of viewing women’s sports like most of the rest of the nation.