Donald Trumps questionable intelligence: All those false claims about his academic record and deris

Donald Trump’s questionable intelligence: All those false claims about his academic record and derision of others bespeak profound insecurity

by Peter Dreier at Salon

http://www.salon.com/2016/12/18/donald-trumps-questionable-intelligence-all-those-false-claims-about-his-academic-record-and-derision-of-others-bespeak-profound-insecurity/

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Trump surely knows that he didn’t get into Wharton on his own merits. He transferred into Wharton’s undergraduate program after spending two years at Fordham University in New York. According to Gwenda Blair’s 2001 biography, “The Trumps,” Trump’s grades at Fordham were not good enough to qualify him for a transfer to Wharton. Blair wrote that Trump got into Wharton as a special favor from a “friendly” admissions officer who knew Trump’s older brother, Freddy. The college’s admissions staff surely knew that Trump’s father was a wealthy real estate developer and a potential donor.

Moreover, Trump has exaggerated his academic accomplishments at Wharton. On at least two occasions in the 1970s — “A Builder Looks Back-and Moves Forward,” on Jan. 28, 1973, and “Donald Trump, Real Estate Promoter, Builds Image as He Buys Buildings,” on Nov. 1, 1976 — the New York Times reported that Trump “graduated first in his class” at Wharton in 1968.

That’s not true. The dean’s list for his graduation year, published in the Daily Pennsylvanian, the campus newspaper, doesn’t include Trump’s name. He has refused to release his grade transcripts from his college days.

It is likely that Trump was the original source for that falsehood, but it isn’t entirely clear, since neither Times article attributes it directly to him. But the fabrication that Trump was first in his class has been repeated in many other articles as well as books about Trump, so he clearly knew that it was out there in the public domain and has never bothered to correct it.




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