April 26, 2011: Trump Says Obama ‘Terrible Student,’ Challenges His Admission to Columbia and Harvard

Billionaire Donald Trump, the host of NBC’s Celebrity Apprentice and a rumored candidate for the Republican presidential nomination for 2012, makes the allegation that President Obama was a “terrible” college student who may have been admitted to the Ivy League universities of Columbia and Harvard because of his race. Trump offers no proof of the claim; it was first advanced in 2008 in a Wall Street Journal editorial that implied Obama was a “mediocre” student and demanded to see a college thesis that does not exist (see September 11, 2008). In 2009, author Jerome Corsi advanced the groundless claim that Obama was “placed” in Harvard Law School through the auspices of an African-American Muslim radical and a Saudi prince (see July 21, 2009). “I heard he was a terrible student, terrible,” Trump says. “How does a bad student go to Columbia and then to Harvard? I’m thinking about it, I’m certainly looking into it. Let him show his records.” Obama, like most politicians, has declined to release his college transcripts. Obama graduated from Columbia and then from Harvard Law School, where he graduated magna cum laude and was the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. Trump says Obama’s refusal to release his college transcripts is part of a pattern of concealing information about himself. “I have friends who have smart sons with great marks, great boards, great everything and they can’t get into Harvard,” Trump says. “We don’t know a thing about this guy. There are a lot of questions that are unanswered about our president.” Trump takes credit for “reinvigorat[ing]” the birther controversy, and boasts, “[T]he last guy [Obama] wants to run against is Donald Trump.” In his turn, Trump refuses to disclose his net worth. [NBC New York, 4/26/2011] Conservative pundit Pat Buchanan agrees, claiming on MSNBC’s Hardball that Obama only got into Harvard Law School because of “affirmative action.” Buchanan has made claims of blacks and Hispanics receiving “special treatment” because of “affirmative action” many times in the past (see May 28, 2009, May 31, 2009, June 12, 2009, June 20, 2009, July 16, 2009, and October 13, 2009). “I think the way was very probably greased, and I think he’s probably affirmative action all the way,” Buchanan says, and adds: “[L]ook… you know how the system works. You apply. He’s an African-American kid at a time where everybody’s saying: ‘Let’s bring those guys in. Give ‘em an advantage, move ‘em ahead.’” [Media Matters, 4/26/2011] Liberal pundit Keith Olbermann, writing on his personal blog, ridicules Trump’s demand to see Obama’s college transcripts, writing: “If that doesn’t work, it’ll be his list of movie rentals back in the days of VHS, or his Chicago White Sox ticket stubs to prove he really is a fan, or his laundry delivery records to make sure William Ayers or Jeremiah Wright or Karl Marx hasn’t been slipping him notes inside the suit pockets like they did in that John LeCarre spy novel.… Translated to this sorry chapter of sorry American politics, that means the Radical Right will keep the conspiracy theory going and simply change the focus.… [T]he debate has never been about whether or not Barack Obama was born in the United States of America. The debate has been about whether the Republicans could or can do by rumor, innuendo, and Fox propaganda, what they cannot do by the ballot: find the overarching ‘scandal’ with which to beat a Democratic president.” [Keith Olbermann, 4/27/2011]