(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) Vice President Kamala Harris got her history wrong in a false assertion regarding women’s March Madness brackets, marking a failed attempt to interject identity politics into sports.
During a Friday interview with Spectrum News 1 at a campaign event in North Carolina, Harris falsely claimed that the NCAA women’s basketball tournaments “were not allowed to have brackets until 2022.”
Offering what she called “a bit of a history lesson” to Spectrum News reporter Reuben Jones, Harris made the demonstrably false statement: “Do you know that women were not—the women’s teams were not allowed to have brackets until 2022. Think about that… better late than ever.”
Sports Fan Kamala Harris claims the NCAA women’s basketball tournament was “not allowed to have brackets until 2022.”
As usual, she is wrong. pic.twitter.com/QaRSsngSxP
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) April 5, 2024
Critics swiftly rebuked Harris’s claims on Twitter, with the research account of the RNC reposting a tweet from Harris’s husband, Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, boasting about his March Madness women brackets. The timestamp on Emhoff’s tweet? 2021—a year prior to Harris’s statements that brackets were permitted.
“As usual, she is wrong,” the RNC wrote, before sharing a series of tweets from 2021 where both Harris and her husband discussed March Madness—including a bracket for the women’s division.
2021 — awkward! https://t.co/iyQMsssOiM
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) April 5, 2024
On March 18, 2021, Emhoff shared a photo of himself completing what seemed to be March Madness brackets. “It’s been a busy week on the road but I couldn’t miss the chance to fill out my #MarchMadness brackets,” he captioned the post.
Harris, using her own Twitter account, responded to Emhoff’s tweet, asking: “Well… who are you taking?”
In reply, Emhoff shared two images of his March Madness selections, one of which was for the “2021 NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball Championship.”
Despite Harris’s claim, women have had their own NCAA tournaments since 1982, as reported by the Daily Caller. From 1972 to 1982, they used brackets under the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women, the outlet added.
A source told the New York Post that Harris may have been alluding that women’s NCAA Tournaments were not formally branded as part of March Madness until 2022. However, that is not what Harris explicitly stated.
