Time To Demand Obama's College Grades Again

It was 1966. They took anybody with a pulse and a rich dad. Pulse not absolutely necessary.

Donald Trump is a self-made maybe-billionaire who got rich all on his own, as long as you don't count the hundreds of millions of dollars his father gave him. And yesterday, the Washington Post   reported that Trump also had more than a little help getting into the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. Oh golly, there goes yet another of Trump's cherished myths about his own greatness -- not that Trump is capable of shame, of course. You know what that means: It must be time to demand Obama's college grades again!

Investigative reporter Michael Kranish got James Nolan, who worked at Penn's admissions office in 1966, to go on the record. Nolan was a close friend of Donald Trump's older brother, Fred Trump Jr., who helped his stupid little brother get into the prestigious school.

"He called me and said, 'You remember my brother Donald?' Which I didn't," Nolan, 81, said in an interview with The Washington Post. "He said: 'He's at Fordham and he would like to transfer to Wharton. Will you interview him?' I was happy to do that."

Soon, Donald Trump arrived at Penn for the interview, accompanied by his father, Fred Trump Sr., who sought to "ingratiate" himself, Nolan said.

Nolan, who said he was the only admissions official to talk to Donald Trump, was required to give Trump a rating, and he recalled, "It must have been decent enough to support his candidacy."

Kranish notes that Trump usually frames his admission to Wharton as proof of what a top-flight brain he has. Trump likes to call Wharton "the hardest school to get into, the best school in the world," describing the business school as "super genius stuff." Funny how real geniuses never use the phrase "super genius stuff" -- we don't recall Stephen Hawking ever saying it, just Wile E. Coyote.

Still, Penn and the Wharton School are top-notch institutions, very exclusive, so at the very least, getting admitted in 1966 must have been a real feather in Trump's cap, proof of his superior qualifications, right?

At the time, Nolan said, more than half of applicants to Penn were accepted, and transfer students such as Donald Trump had an even higher acceptance rate based on their college experience. A Penn official said the acceptance rate for 1966 was not available but noted that the school says on its website that the 1980 rate was "slightly greater than 40%." Today, by comparison, the admissions rate for the incoming Penn class is 7.4 percent, the school recently announced .

"It was not very difficult," Nolan said of the time Trump applied in 1966, adding: "I certainly was not struck by any sense that I'm sitting before a genius. Certainly not a super genius."

Doesn't look like Kranish was able to track down the admission rate for applicants whose big brothers were close personal friends of admissions officers, but the story does note that Donald may have been aware that getting into Penn might have required a helping hand. Ten years earlier, Fred Trump Jr. and his good pal Nolan had hoped to attend Penn together and be roomies. Nolan got in, but Fred's application was rejected. So having a family friend in the admissions office in 1966 may have helped, even if the school was easier to get into then than later.

Kranish also looked into the possibility that young Donald's application may have been helped along by a financial donation from his father. There's no record of a donation from anyone named Trump at the time, but Kranish notes , "[Some] of the donations from that period were made anonymously, so it is not possible to say conclusively whether any Trump family donation was made." That seems like a heck of a stretch, though -- who ever heard of the Trump family engaging in furtive financial shenanigans? It's nigh unthinkable!

The story also recounts the dubious claim -- no doubt sourced by John Barron -- that Donald Trump graduated "first in his class" from Wharton, which appeared in a couple of New York Times stories in the 1970s. Not terribly likely, in case you were wondering:

In fact, Trump's name was not among the top honorees at his commencement . Nor was he on the dean's list his senior year, meaning he was not among the top 56 students in his graduating class of 366 . All that is known for certain is that Trump received at least a 2.0 average, or C, enabling him to graduate. A 4.0 is equivalent to an A.

Penn officials said they are prohibited from releasing Trump's grades unless he allows it.

Hell, if there were a document showing Trump was anywhere near the top of his class, he not only would have demanded it be released, he'd have it made up into T-shirts, and he'd show copies to visiting heads of state. Just like he always shows off that electoral map showing him winning vast numbers of sparsely populated counties. 

And of course, Kranish reminds us of all the times Trump insisted Barack Obama was hiding something about his college records, because how could a guy born in Kenya ever get into a good school? As for Trump's academic zeal, Kranish interviewed one of Trump's Wharton classmates, Louis Calomaris, who said Trump seemed like a "bright guy," but maybe not exactly a super-genius:

[He] was always lazy — he wouldn't read a book. I never considered him stupid; I considered him opportunistic. . . . He cared about making money, and he knew that the most prestigious school was Wharton, and that worked with his opportunistic nature.

Probably just jealous, don't you think?

In conclusion, here's one more story exposing what a complete fraud Donald Trump is, and it won't make a bit of difference because his supporters know he's the bestest and smartest, and the rest of us are well past being surprised by anything any more, the end.

[ WaPo ]

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