Just What Kind Of Student Was Donald Trump?
Donald Trump has been aggressively questioning Barack Obama’s academic record, suggesting that the president was a “terrible student” who did not deserve to get in to Columbia University and Harvard Law School. While Trump has no evidence to back up these claims, there are strong indications that Trump has repeatedly inflated his own academic record — and that he used family connections to gain admission to the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
“I heard [Obama] was a terrible student, terrible. How does a bad student go to Columbia and then to Harvard?” Trump asked in an interview last month. “I’m thinking about it, I’m certainly looking into it. Let him show his records.”
But an examination of Trump’s own academic record yields a distinctly unflattering picture of the celebrity businessman. Among other things, Trump has allowed the media to report for years that he graduated first in his class at Wharton, despite strong evidence that this is not true and indications that he was, in fact, an undistinguished student.
Trump did not go to Wharton’s prestigious MBA program. Rather, he received an undergraduate degree offered by Wharton to University of Pennsylvania students. And Trump didn’t attend Wharton for a full four years. Instead, he transferred there after spending his first two undergraduate years at Fordham, the Jesuit university in the Bronx.
“I decided that as long as I had to be in college, I might as well test myself against the best,” he explains in his 1989 autobiography, “The Art of the Deal.”
So how did Trump get into Wharton?
Gwenda Blair’s book on the Trump family reports that he gained admission as a transfer student only because of “an interview with a friendly Wharton admissions officer who was one of Freddy’s old high school classmates.” (Freddy is Donald’s older brother.) Trump was also the son of one of the wealthiest New York businessmen of the era, the developer Fred Trump. That certainly couldn’t have hurt his admission chances.
Blair also reports in her Trump biography that his grades at Fordham were merely “respectable.”
Trump has consistently portrayed himself as an exceptional student at Wharton. In March, for example, he explained his doubts about the president’s birthplace by saying, “Let me tell you, I’m a really smart guy. I was a really good student at the best school in the country.”
In 2004, Trump told CNN, “I went to the Wharton School of Finance, I got very good marks, I was a good student, it’s the best business school in the world, as far as I’m concerned.”
Over the years, myriad profiles of Trump have claimed that he was “first in his class” at Wharton in 1968.
Here’s what the New York Times reported in a January 1973 piece:
Donald, who was graduated first in his class from the Wharton School of Finance of the University of Pennsylvania in 1968, joined his father about five years ago. He has what his father calls “drive.” He also possesses, in his father’s judgment, business acumen. “Donald is the smartest person I know”, he remarked admiringly. “Everything he touches turns to gold.”
The Times repeated the “fact” again in a 1976 profile, “Donald Trump, Real Estate Promoter, Builds Image As He Buys Buildings”:
Donald, who grew up in the Trump-built home in Jamaica Estates, Queens, began learning the business when he was only 12. He continued helping his father make deals while a student at the Wharton School of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania, from which he graduated first in his class in 1968.
The clear narrative being presented is of Trump as an intellectual heavyweight — starting a business at age 12, first in his class at Wharton, “the smartest person I know.” Who told the Times reporters that Trump graduated first in his class? It’s not clear, though Trump himself is an obvious possibility. We also know that Trump, a voracious consumer of media coverage of himself, would almost certainly have seen these references to his graduating “first in his class.”
The “fact” that Trump graduated first in his class made its way into various books, magazines, and websites.
So what’s the truth about Trump’s record at Wharton?
Writing in the New York Times magazine in 1984, William Geist reported that “the commencement program from 1968 does not list him as graduating with honors of any kind,” even though “just about every profile ever written about Mr. Trump states that he graduated first in his class at Wharton in 1968.”
The writer Jerome Tuccille reported in his 1985 biography of Trump that while “it has been reported that he graduated first in the class … Donald denied that he ever made such a claim. Actually he was not among the honor students that year.” Emphasis added.
Tuccille continues:
“Donald agreed to attend Wharton for his father’s sake. He showed up for classes and did what was required of him but he was clearly bored and spent a lot of time on outside business activities.”
In 1988, New York magazine reported that the idea that Trump had graduated first in his class was a “myth.” The writer snarked that, in fact, Trump had gotten merely the “highest grades possible.”
I wanted to get Trump’s response to all this, but his spokesman has not replied to a request for comment. A Wharton spokeswoman tells me that the school does not release information about alumni beyond year of graduation and degree granted.
I will update this post if Trump gets back to me. The easy solution to clear this all up, of course, would be for Trump to release his academic records — something he has repeatedly demanded that Obama do with his own academic records.
Trump’s academic performance at Wharton, good or bad, didn’t affect his career much. When he graduated, he promptly went to work for his father’s real estate firm, where he was made president a few years later.
The Irony Of Tax Day: The Dwindling, Victorious Tea Party
In case you didn’t notice, today is Tax Day, which means it’s also the second anniversary of one of the tea party movement’s biggest moments, April 15, 2009, when dozens, if not hundreds, of well-attended protests were held around the country.
It was a coming-out party of sorts for the movement. No one really knew what the tea party was at that point, and, as momentum built toward the Tax Day rallies, details began to emerge regarding just who they were, and who was organizing them.
Today, the movement seems to be dwindling.
Tax Day, 2011, came and has largely gone without the same kind of massive, irate throngs in every state and major city. We can attribute that, to some degree, to the scheduling shift of Tax Day to April 18 and the movement’s consequent dispersed focus, holding rallies on Friday, Monday, and over the weekend, rather than on just a single day. But you can’t deny that, as an activist movement, the tea party has lost some momentum, attendance-wise.
A Michele Bachmann rally in South Carolina Monday drew a measly 300 people. A few weeks ago, maybe a couple hundred showed up to a Capitol Hill protests held by Tea Party Patriots, the nation’s largest tea party membership group, which once estimated its membership at over 15 million. It was hard to tell how many were there to participate and how many were there to spectate and the tea partiers were almost outnumbered by the reporters.
A Virginia tea party activist told me recently that members of his group are spread too thin. “We’re kind of saturated right now,” he said, explaining that different people and groups ask them to do too many things. He showed me a few of the emails sent around to members, asking various things of them. It’s a problem, he said.
As the activist infrastructure has built up, so have the demands on individual activists. With the initial fervor wearing off, it makes for a tired bunch of crusaders.
And yet the tea party seems to have accomplished its main goal: bending the will of the Republican Party.
Republican politicians widely cater messages and platforms to a tea party audience. Listening to what is said by Republican presidential contenders, House members, and candidates for office, it’s tough to argue the tea party hasn’t left its mark. It’s taboo not to talk about drastic cuts to federal spending, whether or not one has a plan for the specifics.
During the midterms, Republican candidates met with tea party groups, seeking their approval. It became impossible to distinguish a “tea party” candidate from a regular Republican.
That effect has carried over into 2012. The Tea Party Express will partner with CNN to host a GOP presidential debate, and the movement’s influence will finally be institutionalized in the 2012 primary contest.
Perhaps most significantly, Washington is now engaged in a serious discussion of how to reduce spending levels over the long term. While President Obama rejected the House GOP’s drastic 2012 budget proposal out of hand, it’s safe to say he was forced by November’s results and the tea-party-fueled GOP House takeover to propose a big number, $4 trillion, of cuts from the deficit over the next 12 years.
The tea party movement can legitimately take some credit for that. We’ll find out, as the 2012 election approaches, just how much gas is left in the tea party’s tank. It’s likely that the GOP 2012 contest and the tea party’s rallies will blend into one continuous political event, with candidates taking turns on stage and with lots of people turning out.
But the movement is in an ironic place now. Without an election this year and with attendance tapering off, it’s also become institutionalized as a fixture in American politics, having possibly swayed enough 2012 candidates to preempt the presidential primary from even being a flashpoint in the GOP’s identity.
Apparently what we’re seeing now is what victory looks like.
By: Chris Good, The Atlantic, April 18, 2011
A SUCKER’S BET: Are Republicans Really Prepared To “Gamble On Entitlement Reform”?
The effort to pass a budget for the remainder of the fiscal year will be the principal challenge for policymakers over the next few days, but while that work continues, congressional Republicans will also start a massive fight over the next budget.
We’ll have more on this later — sneak preview: the GOP wants to gut entitlements — but as the process gets underway, it’s worth pausing to appreciate the politics here. The Weekly Standard‘s Stephen Hayes has a lengthy new report, arguing that Republicans are prepared to “gamble on entitlement reform,” and the GOP thinks it can win this time.
If there is one thing that political strategists, pollsters, and elected officials of both parties have agreed on for decades, it’s that entitlement reform is a sure political loser. Social Security is the “third rail” — touch it and you die. Suggest changes to Medicaid and you don’t care about the poor. Propose modest reforms to Medicare and you’re the target of a well-funded “Mediscare” campaign that ensures your defeat.
No longer.
“People are getting it that these things are unsustainable,” says Karl Rove. “For so many people, debt is no longer abstract. It’s more concrete. I don’t know if it’s seeing Greece on TV or what. It’s still tough, but it’s not the political loser it used to be.”
Other influential Republicans go further. They believe that getting serious about entitlement reform can be politically advantageous.
“I think it can be a real winner for Republicans if we handle it the right way,” says South Carolina senator Jim DeMint.
The piece goes on to quote all kinds of Republicans, all of whom genuinely seem to believe there’s a public appetite for their entitlement agenda. GOP officials have been too scared to tackle this in earnest before, the theory goes, but bolstered by public support, this time will be different. This time, they say, Americans want entitlement cuts, and Democratic criticisms will fall on deaf ears.
Time will tell, I suppose, but all of the available evidence suggests these folks have no idea what they’re talking about, and are poised to pursue one of the most dramatic examples of political overreach we’ve seen in a very long time.
Republicans can presumably read polls as easily as I can, but let’s focus for a moment on the latest CNN poll, released late last week. Asked, for example, about Medicaid funding, a combined 75% want funding levels to stay the same or go up. For Social Security, 87% of Americans want funding levels to stay the same or go up. For Medicare, 87% want funding levels to stay the same or go up — and most want funding to increase, not stay the same.
For some reason, Hayes and his allies look at numbers like these and think Republicans will benefit from pushing entitlement cuts. No, seriously, that’s what they think. GOP leaders are not only arguing this, they’re actually counting on it as part of a larger political strategy.
Karl Rove, ostensibly the GOP’s most gifted strategist, believes Americans may be “seeing Greece on TV,” and suddenly find themselves favoring Medicare cuts.
I don’t think he’s kidding.
Hayes noted in his piece, “So have things really changed? We’ll soon find out.”
On this point, we agree.
By: Steve Bensen, Washington Monthly, April 4, 2011
PolitiFact’s Lie of the Year: ‘A government takeover of health care’
In the spring of 2009, a Republican strategist settled on a brilliant and powerful attack line for President Barack Obama’s ambitious plan to overhaul America’s health insurance system. Frank Luntz, a consultant famous for his phraseology, urged GOP leaders to call it a “government takeover.”
“Takeovers are like coups,” Luntz wrote in a 28-page memo. “They both lead to dictators and a loss of freedom.”
The line stuck. By the time the health care bill was headed toward passage in early 2010, Obama and congressional Democrats had sanded down their program, dropping the “public option” concept that was derided as too much government intrusion. The law passed in March, with new regulations, but no government-run plan.
But as Republicans smelled serious opportunity in the midterm elections, they didn’t let facts get in the way of a great punchline. And few in the press challenged their frequent assertion that under Obama, the government was going to take over the health care industry.
PolitiFact editors and reporters have chosen “government takeover of health care” as the 2010 Lie of the Year. Uttered by dozens of politicians and pundits, it played an important role in shaping public opinion about the health care plan and was a significant factor in the Democrats’ shellacking in the November elections.
Readers of PolitiFact, the St. Petersburg Times‘ independent fact-checking website, also chose it as the year’s most significant falsehood by an overwhelming margin. (Their second-place choice was Rep. Michele Bachmann’s claim that Obama was going to spend $200 million a day on a trip to India, a falsity that still sprouts.)
By selecting “government takeover’ as Lie of the Year, PolitiFact is not making a judgment on whether the health care law is good policy.
The phrase is simply not true.
Said Jonathan Oberlander, a professor of health policy at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill: “The label ‘government takeover” has no basis in reality, but instead reflects a political dynamic where conservatives label any increase in government authority in health care as a ‘takeover.’ ”
An inaccurate claim
“Government takeover” conjures a European approach where the government owns the hospitals and the doctors are public employees. But the law Congress passed, parts of which have already gone into effect, relies largely on the free market:
• Employers will continue to provide health insurance to the majority of Americans through private insurance companies.
• Contrary to the claim, more people will get private health coverage. The law sets up “exchanges” where private insurers will compete to provide coverage to people who don’t have it.
• The government will not seize control of hospitals or nationalize doctors.
• The law does not include the public option, a government-run insurance plan that would have competed with private insurers.
• The law gives tax credits to people who have difficulty affording insurance, so they can buy their coverage from private providers on the exchange. But here too, the approach relies on a free market with regulations, not socialized medicine.
PolitiFact reporters have studied the 906-page bill and interviewed independent health care experts. We have concluded it is inaccurate to call the plan a government takeover because it relies largely on the existing system of health coverage provided by employers.
It’s true that the law does significantly increase government regulation of health insurers. But it is, at its heart, a system that relies on private companies and the free market.
Republicans who maintain the Democratic plan is a government takeover say that characterization is justified because the plan increases federal regulation and will require Americans to buy health insurance.
But while those provisions are real, the majority of Americans will continue to get coverage from private insurers. And it will bring new business for the insurance industry: People who don”t currently have coverage will get it, for the most part, from private insurance companies.
Consider some analogies about strict government regulation. The Federal Aviation Administration imposes detailed rules on airlines. State laws require drivers to have car insurance. Regulators tell electric utilities what they can charge. Yet that heavy regulation is not described as a government takeover.
This year, PolitiFact analyzed five claims of a “government takeover of health care.” Three were rated Pants on Fire, two were rated False.
‘Can’t do it in four words’
Other news organizations have also said the claim is false.
Slate said “the proposed health care reform does not take over the system in any sense.’ In a New York Times economics blog, Princeton University professor Uwe Reinhardt, an expert in health care economics, said, “Yes, there would be a substantial government-mandated reorganization of this relatively small corner of the private health insurance market (that serves people who have been buying individual policies). But that hardly constitutes a government takeover of American health care.”
FactCheck.org, an independent fact-checking group run by the University of Pennsylvania, has debunked it several times, calling it one of the “whoppers” about health care and saying the reform plan is neither “government-run” nor a “government takeover.”
We asked incoming House Speaker John Boehner’s office why Republican leaders repeat the phrase when it has repeatedly been shown to be incorrect. Michael Steel, Boehner’s spokesman, replied, “We believe that the job-killing ObamaCare law will result in a government takeover of health care. That’s why we have pledged to repeal it, and replace it with common-sense reforms that actually lower costs.”
Analysts say health care reform is such a complicated topic that it often cannot be summarized in snappy talking points.
“If you’re going to tell the truth about something as complicated as health care and health care reform, you probably need at least four sentences,” said Maggie Mahar, author of Money-Driven Medicine: The Real Reason Health Care Costs So Much. “You can”t do it in four words.”
Mahar said the GOP simplification distorted the truth about the plan. “Doctors will not be working for the government. Hospitals will not be owned by the government,” she said. “That’s what a government takeover of health care would mean, and that’s not at all what we”re doing.”
How the line was used
If you followed the health care debate or the midterm election – even casually – it’s likely you heard “government takeover” many times.
PolitiFact sought to count how often the phrase was used in 2010 but found an accurate tally was unfeasible because it had been repeated so frequently in so many places. It was used hundreds of times during the debate over the bill and then revived during the fall campaign. A few numbers:
• The phrase appears more than 90 times on Boehner’s website, GOPLeader.gov.
• It was mentioned eight times in the 48-page Republican campaign platform “A Pledge to America” as part of their plan to “repeal and replace the government takeover of health care.”
• The Republican National Committee’s website mentions a government takeover of health care more than 200 times.
Conservative groups and tea party organizations joined the chorus. It was used by FreedomWorks, the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute.
The phrase proliferated in the media even after Democrats dropped the public option. In 2010 alone, “government takeover” was mentioned 28 times in the Washington Post, 77 times in Politico and 79 times on CNN. A review of TV transcripts showed “government takeover” was primarily used as a catchy sound bite, not for discussions of policy details.
In most transcripts we examined, Republican leaders used the phrase without being challenged by interviewers. For example, during Boehner’s Jan. 31 appearance on Meet the Press, Boehner said it five times. But not once was he challenged about it.
In rare cases when the point was questioned, the GOP leader would recite various regulations found in the bill and insist that they constituted a takeover. But such followups were rare.
An effective phrase
Politicians and officials in the health care industry have been warning about a “government takeover” for decades.
The phrase became widely used in the early 1990s when President Bill Clinton was trying to pass health care legislation. Then, as today, Democrats tried to debunk the popular Republican refrain.
When Obama proposed his health plan in the spring of 2009, Luntz, a Republican strategist famous for his research on effective phrases, met with focus groups to determine which messages would work best for the Republicans. He did not respond to calls and e-mails from PolitiFact asking him to discuss the phrase.
The 28-page memo he wrote after those sessions, “The Language of Healthcare 2009,” provides a rare glimpse into the art of finding words and phrases that strike a responsive chord with voters.
The memo begins with “The 10 Rules for Stopping the ‘Washington Takeover’ of Healthcare.” Rule No. 4 says people “are deathly afraid that a government takeover will lower their quality of care – so they are extremely receptive to the anti-Washington approach. It’s not an economic issue. It’s a bureaucratic issue.”
The memo is about salesmanship, not substance. It doesn’t address whether the lines are accurate. It just says they are effective and that Republicans should use them. Indeed, facing a Democratic plan that actually relied on the free market to try to bring down costs, Luntz recommended sidestepping that inconvenient fact:
“The arguments against the Democrats’ healthcare plan must center around politicians, bureaucrats and Washington … not the free market, tax incentives or competition.”
Democrats tried to combat the barrage of charges about a government takeover. The White House and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi repeatedly put out statements, but they were drowned out by a disciplined GOP that used the phrase over and over.
Democrats could never agree on their own phrases and were all over the map in their responses, said Howard Dean, former head of the Democratic National Committee.
“It was uncoordinated. Everyone had their own idea,” Dean said in an interview with PolitiFact.
“The Democrats are atrocious at messaging,” he said. “They’ve gotten worse since I left, not better. It’s just appalling. First of all, you don”t play defense when you”re doing messaging, you play offense. The Republicans have learned this well.”
Dean grudgingly admires the Republican wordsmith. “Frank Luntz has it right, he just works for the wrong side. You give very simple catch phrases that encapsulate the philosophy of the bill.”
A responsive chord
By March of this year, when Obama signed the bill into law, 53 percent of respondents in a Bloomberg poll said they agreed that “the current proposal to overhaul health care amounts to a government takeover.”
Exit polls showed the economy was the top issue for voters in the November election, but analysts said the drumbeat about the “government takeover” during the campaign helped cement the advantage for the Republicans.
Rep. Earl Blumenauer, an Oregon Democrat whose provision for Medicare end-of-life care was distorted into the charge of “death panels” (last year’s Lie of the Year), said the Republicans’ success with the phrase was a matter of repetition.
“There was a uniformity of Republican messaging that was disconnected from facts,” Blumenauer said. “The sheer discipline . . . was breathtaking.”
By: Bill Adair, Angie Drobnic Holan, PolitiFact-December 16th, 2010
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