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(Trump's DEI admission to Wharton as an undergraduate. He did not go to graduate school.)
"The myth of Donald Trump, as written by Donald Trump, took yet another blow Monday,"saysThe Washington Post's Aaron Blake. President Trump has frequently highlighted his attendance at the prestigious University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Finance as evidence of his first-rate intellect, but on Monday,thePostreportedthat he got into Wharton with a little help from his friends — or, rather, his older brother's friend.
In 1966, Fred Trump Jr. called his close friend James Nolan, then working in Penn's admission office,thePostreports:
"He called me and said, 'You remember my brother Donald?' Which I didn't," Nolan, 81, said in an interview with The Washington Post. "He said: 'He's at Fordham and he would like to transfer to Wharton. Will you interview him?' I was happy to do that." Soon, Donald Trump arrived at Penn for the interview, accompanied by his father, Fred Trump Sr., who sought to "ingratiate" himself, Nolan said. [The Washington Post]
Nolan said he was the only admissions official to talk to Trump and he gave him a rating, but the final decision rested with his boss, and "it was not very difficult" to get into Wharton in 1966, easily higher than 50 percent if you were transferring from another school. "I certainly was not struck by any sense that I'm sitting before a genius,"he told thePost. "Certainly not a super genius." Former Wharton classmates sayTrump was a middling student.
None of this is to suggest Trump isn't smart. But added to hisevident help staying out of Vietnamandmuch-greater-than-acknowledged financial boostfrom his father, it's more proof Trump "routinely relied on family or other connections at key junctures and has inflated the early successes that resulted,"Blake says. This is "hardly the story of a self-made, brilliant budding real estate tycoon. It's a story that apparently could have gone much differently if its protagonist were not born a Trump."
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