Trump's U Penn (Wharton) Graduation Picture
The tracks of “friends of Donald Trump”
convincing various schools he attended to destroy or keep secret his grades are
everywhere. His father had money, a key to admission to many colleges in the
1960s, but wherever he attended a school or college, Donald Trump was always a
terrible student. Bullying and street smarts came easily to him, lessons from
his father, but anything that required critical thinking or deep research and
understanding… not so much. His academic track record suggests that Trump was
anything but a gifted student at the top of his class as he claims and as Fox
News repeats without the slightest supporting fact.
“In 2011, days after Donald Trump challenged
President Barack Obama to ‘show his records’ to prove that he hadn’t been a ‘terrible
student,’ the headmaster at New York Military Academy got an order from his
boss: Find Trump’s academic records and help bury them.
“The superintendent of the private school ‘came
to me in a panic because he had been accosted by prominent, wealthy alumni of
the school who were Mr. Trump’s friends’ and who wanted to keep his records
secret, recalled Evan Jones, the headmaster at the time. ‘He said, ‘You need to
go grab that record and deliver it to me because I need to deliver it to
them.’ ’
“The superintendent, Jeffrey Coverdale,
confirmed Monday that members of the school’s board of trustees initially
wanted him to hand over President Trump’s records to them, but Coverdale said
he refused.
“The former NYMA officials’ recollections add
new details to one of the allegations that Michael Cohen, the president’s
longtime personal lawyer and fixer, made before Congress last week. Cohen, who
told the House Oversight and Reform Committee that part of his job was to
attack Trump’s critics and defend his reputation, said that Trump ordered
him ‘to threaten his high school,
his colleges and the College Board to never release his grades or SAT scores.’
“Trump has frequently boasted that he was a
stellar student, but he declined throughout the 2016 campaign to release any of
his academic records, telling The Washington Post then, ‘I’m not
letting you look at anything.’” Washington Post, March 5th.
“Fordham
University is confirming it received a letter from Donald Trump’s then-lawyer
threatening legal action if Trump’s academic records became public… Fordham says the letter from
Trump’s lawyer was preceded by a phone call from a campaign staffer. Fordham
says it’s bound by federal law barring the release of student records [anyway]…
Trump attended the Roman Catholic university in New York City for two years. He
graduated from the University of Pennsylvania… Penn and the College Board
declined to comment.” MarketWatch.com, March 1st.
In Donald’s mind, abstract
concepts seem to fly far above his mental powers. But where he can anchor those
issues in dollars and cents, he creates an “understanding” solely based on hard
dollar metrics – even if incorrectly applied – and creates what inevitably turn
out to be fallacious descriptions, taking credit as success for the disasters
that have become the footprints of his administration. North Korea, which has
played Trump like a yoyo and still has every single nuclear weapon and ballistic
missile they have had since the outset of the “peace talks,” has “wonderful
beaches” and potential to build magnificent, dollar-generating resorts, notes
Trump. No Donald, Kim Jong-un isn’t going to relinquish weapons he deems
essential for his regime to stay in power in order to trade up to a Trump golf
course and resort strategy.
Give rich people huge tax cuts
and they will invest that capital to create more jobs, said the Donald. Trickle
down economics. Trump gave them the tax cuts, and the rich repaid him by using
that windfall to buy back their own shares… soon running out of capital to make
any of those promised investments. Tariffs are a huge win for Americans,
screams Donald Trump, when every economist on earth knows that a tariff is a
consumer tax. And Mexico is not paying for that wall, one way or the other.
But Trump is so good with money.
He’s a billionaire many times over. We should trust his instincts. Really? Then
let’s see his tax returns to verify his wealth claims and make sure what he
told the government is true. Why have Trump companies gone bankrupt so many
times? Why have there been over 3500 lawsuits over money in Trumpland? Why did
Goldman Sachs say that if Trump had simply invested his inherited wealth in the
stock market, he would be vastly wealthier than even he claims to be now?
Donald cannot separate policies
that are good for America, insure global power and influence plus the ability
to protect American interests worldwide from a dollar-based profit-loss
analysis. His latest rant, which will struggle in the Democratically-controlled
House, is to insist that our allies pay hard cash for our defensive troops
stationed in their countries. Puppet-master Vladimir Putin, Trump-manipulator
Kim Jong-un and PRC strongman Xi Jinping must be cheering. If genuinely
pressed, how many of those “allied” countries would simply invite U.S. forces
to leave? We just might squander our last few shekels of credibility and
influence in this latest Trump suggestion. Do you hear the cackling in the
background? Even Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro must be chortling.
We are even more the laughing
stock of the world than we have ever been, a track record few politicians would
point to with pride. Donald does. Remember this speech The Donald made before
the United Nations General Assembly on September 25th? “In less than two
years my administration has accomplished more than any almost administration in
the history of our country… So true.” The gathering of seasoned diplomats and
world leaders immediately erupted into laughter.
Make those no-good allies pay
for U.S. soldiers on overseas bases? This inane policy doesn’t even sit well
with Trump’s GOP supporters. “Rep. Liz
Cheney (R-Wyo.), the third-ranking House Republican, on Sunday [3/10]
criticized President Donald Trump’s reported plan to force U.S. allies to pay
billions of dollars more for hosting American troops on their soil… Under a new
formula devised by the president, allies such as Japan and South Korea would
potentially pay Washington the full cost of stationing U.S. troops in their
territory, plus an additional 50 percent.
“The formula, which Trump has dubbed ‘cost
plus 50,’ could cause affected countries to contribute five times what they
currently do, according
to The Washington Post.
“Cheney told NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’ that the
impact of this plan would be ‘absolutely devastating’ to U.S. diplomacy… ‘We
benefit tremendously ... [from] our bases and our cooperation with our allies,”
she told host Chuck Todd. “The notion that we are somehow now going to charge
them cost plus 50 is really, it’s wrongheaded and it would be devastating to
the security of our nation and to our allies.’” Huffington Post, March 10th.
Hey, Donnie, if money is the metric of international diplomacy, I’ve got an
idea. Why not let Vladimir Putin pay billions, even trillions, to locate
Russian military facilities inside the continental United States?
The harsh aversion that Trump and his base
share over qualified expertise, preferring shoot-from-the-hip decisions and
catchy slogans to facts, have brought the United States to one of its weakest
and least globally influential periods in its post-World War I history. We are
horribly polarized and seemingly ungovernable. The damage from the Trump legacy
may not even be reparable; who is ever going to trust the United States and its
treaty commitments ever again?
I’m Peter Dekom, and if this bothers you as
much as it bothers me, then make your vote count!
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