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“Trust me, I’m like a smart person”

Published by digby on March 18, 2019

“Trust me, I’m like a smart person”

by digby


This story about Trump’s two years at the Wharton School proves once again that he is a liar.

On the morning of Trump’s graduation in 1968 — “the beginning,” as he said — his time at Wharton amounted to a single line of text in the program, as part of a Bachelor of Science in Economics list:

He did get in easily, apparently. I assume people are chasing the circumstances of that down right now. Here’s a previous story from the Penn school paper:

Shortly after Donald Trump questioned President Barack Obama’s legitimacy as a U.S. citizen, he challenged his academic record. 

“I heard [Obama] was a terrible student, terrible. How does a bad student go to Columbia and then to Harvard?” Trump said in an April 2011 interview with The Associated Press. “I’m thinking about it, I’m certainly looking into it. Let him show his records.”

During the February 2011 Conservative Political Action Conference, Trump said, “The people that went to school with him, they never saw him, they don’t know who he is. It’s crazy.”

Pulitizer Prize-winning website Politifact rated Trump’s statement as a “pants on fire” lie.

All queries and the Politifact report show Obama’s time at those Ivy League schools was well documented and represented honestly.

Obama graduated from Columbia University in 1983 with a degree in political science and graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1991. He was also the first black president of the Harvard Law Review.

University of Pennsylvania records and documents uncovered by the school’s student newspaper, The Daily Pennsylvanian, show it’s President Trump’s academic record that is now in question.

For decades, the national media has reported that Trump graduated “first in his class” at Wharton, often confusing his undergraduate degree with the Ivy League university’s top-ranked MBA program.

In 1973 and 1976, the New York Times reported that Trump graduated first in his class in 1968 from the Wharton School of Finance.

During campaign stops in Pennsylvania, Trump frequently said he was “a very smart guy” and knew the state well because he went to Wharton.

When PennLive tried to delve into his academic record in the summer, a school spokesman said it’s university policy to not release such information other than confirming graduation.

In Gwenda Blair’s 2001 book, “The Trumps: Three Generations of Builders and a President,” she said Trump transferred into Wharton from Fordham University with help from family connections. The president’s older brother, Freddy Trump, knew an admissions counselor at Wharton, she said.

Of course he did.

Update:

The Daily Show hit back:

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