Is there a Trump sports curse? USMNT's World Cup flameout revives the theory - USA Today
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From the Knicks' NBA Finals stumble to a USMNT blowout, a pattern keeps surfacing when Trump shows up — but is it a curse or just coincidence?
Illusory CorrelationConfirmation BiasApopheniaAvailability Heuristic
Theory Briefing
- The USMNT's loss to Belgium and the Knicks' NBA Finals stumble are cited as the latest data points in the so-called Trump sports curse.
- The theory holds that teams or athletes publicly linked to Trump tend to underperform shortly after, fueling a recurring debate about cause versus coincidence.
- With a large enough roster of Trump-adjacent sports moments, finding a losing streak among them is almost statistically inevitable.
- The curse framing turns random losses into a coherent story — a classic case of humans finding patterns in noisy data.