Trump: I Heard Obama Was a "Terrible, Terrible" Student; How'd He Get Into Havard? He Should Release the Records.

The guy has moxie. Sure, I can be nitpicky and note that Trump is using the "I heard that X" formulation, which is really license to say whatever you want without evidence; but who cares? This is politics, baby, not an Auburn faculty mixer or Deerfield Academy parent's day.

Let me say that I suspect what Trump says is true. I have no evidence for it. But then, I've never seen any evidence against it, either; for four years running now I have been fed a Narrative about the genius of Barack Obama without a shred of anecdotal or documentary evidence to support that narrative.

(Actually, I have some evidence -- other professors said he was an empty and non-high-academic-firepower teacher when he had that associate Constitutional law gig.)

My only real problem here is that Trump is using the "I heard" thing to also say Obama has no birth certificate, which I doubt is true, and which, most importantly, I think many persuadable voters also doubt is true; and he's using it here, too, which means that if his first "I heard" gets tarnished or rejected than this more-likely "I heard" will also suffer and be discounted as also false.

Poisoning the well, then; or, if not poisoning it exactly, then dumping a lot of salt into it to make it distasteful.

But good for Trump for saying it:

"I heard he was a terrible student, terrible. How does a bad student go to Columbia and then to Harvard?" Trump said in an interview with The Associated Press. "I'm thinking about it, I'm certainly looking into it. Let him show his records."

Obama graduated from Columbia University in New York in 1983 with a degree in political science after transferring from Occidental College in California. He went on to Harvard Law School, where he graduated magna cum laude 1991 and was the first black president of the Harvard Law Review.

Oh wait, I did forget that magna cum laude part, which isn't easy at any school, let alone Harvard.

Ah well, I want to see his grades and which courses he managed his A's in, even still, and I want to know there was no special non-grade-based track for magna at Harvard.

Impress me, buddy.

I want to know. I'm tired of every Republican's SAT scores and grades being leaked while the frigging colleges clamp down on Democrats' records like they're blueprints for hydrogen warheads.

Trump once again rejects the Ryan plan, which is good for politics but bad for the nation's survival:

— Said Republicans had made a mistake by embracing a budget proposal crafted by Wisconsin GOP Rep. Paul Ryan that included deep cuts in Medicare. "The seniors are afraid. The plan Paul Ryan put forth has made the Democrats so happy," Trump said.

Sure it has. Truth doesn't win too many elections. But that doesn't make falsehoods noble, it just makes the popular.

posted by Ace at 02:50 PM

| Access Comments