You Are Probably A Huge Loser If You Went To Trump University

this prof sucks

During the literal dick-measuring contest that was last night's GOP debate, poor little Marco Rubio tried his damndest to get Donald Trump to talk about Trump University, which was basically an overpriced Tony Robbins-style self-help dealio, except instead of overcoming your inner demons or some shit, Trump promised that if you handed over your hard earned cash, he wouldgive you magic beansteach you his real estate secrets and you too could become a vulgar flashy mogul and run for president some day.

Some things never go quite as planned. Trump University was not enough of a smashing success, apparently, for Trump to keep it around, so he drowned it in a bathtub or fired it from "The Apprentice" or whatever he does to get rid of subpar deals (but not before he was forced to change its name from Trump University to Trump Entrepreneur Initiative since it wasn't actually, you know, a school). It has been largely non-existent for five years, but the sweet sweet lawsuits have lingered on, the gift that keeps on giving.

One such lawsuit was filed by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and seeks a cool $40 million in restitution. Why does huge loser Eric Schneiderman want Donald Trump's hard-earned money? Probably because people paid a literal fuckton of money for nothing, really. 

[The lawsuit alleges] that Trump had defrauded more than 5,000 individuals through the unlicensed institution [and] that Trump personally earned $5 million from the enterprise, in which sales personnel were assigned the goal of getting people to pay $1,495 for a three-day seminar in real estate techniques.

To attract students, Trump released a marketing video that pledged "we are going to have professors and adjunct professors that are absolutely terrific. . . and these are all people who are going to be handpicked by me."

Fifteen hundred bucks was the low end for this scammity-scam, actually. People were encouraged to throw down $20,000 for a year-long mentorship with a super special real estate someone who, surprise! did not turn out to be hand-picked by Trump's tiny hands.

There's another lawsuit proceeding merrily along out in California, and Trump actually had to sit for depositions in that one -- depositions the Washington Post was kind enough to post in full right smack dab in the middle of the debate. Turns out that Trump didn't remember any of the amazing top-notch huge winners he'd ostensibly personally selected. 

Donald Trump has claimed he has the "world's greatest memory," but when it came time this winter to give testimony in fraud cases filed against him and a real estate training program known as "Trump University," he displayed a repeated inability to recall names and faces of instructors he had claimed to have hired personally.

"I can't remember that," he said on Dec. 10, when asked by trial lawyers in one of the class-action cases whether he had met one of the instructors in a program that provided training in building wealth through real estate.

"The name sounds familiar but its too many years," he said when asked about the next name. "Too many years," he answered more than a dozen times.

The plaintiffs' attorneys trotted out names, pictures, videos, resumes, transcripts, course materials, live chickens, the ghost of Andy Rooney -- anything, really, to see if Trump ever remembered anything about an institution in which he was supposedly so hands-on, all to no avail. They also asked Donald what big real estate secrets he might have been sharing with the lucky duckies attending these seminars. Thanks to the miracle of confidential depositions being released into the wild, you too can now know the secret of Trump's success, without having to pay $20,000. Are you ready?

Yes, people gave Donald Trump thousands of dollars to have randos teach them "location, location, location." Don't you wish you'd thought of this first?

[ ABC / WaPo ]