And the president is seemingly caught in another whopper. And by that doggone “fake press” at that.
As far back as the 1980s, the New York Times reports, Donald Trump has been claiming that he graduated at the top of his class at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Business School. Yet despite these claims of being numero uno, school records suggest that Trump was not—nor was he even close.
The coldest part is that this exposure comes from the students at the institution itself. The University of Pennsylvania’s student-run newspaper, the Daily Pennsylvanian, found historical documents (or primary sources) to dispute the president’s claims.
It dug into the records available during the time Trump was at the school (he finished at UPenn in 1968 after transferring from Fordham University as a junior).
In 1968 the Daily Pennsylvanian published a list of the 56 students who were on the Wharton Dean’s List that year—Trump’s name is not among them. The paper also found the commencement program from 1968, which does not list Trump as graduating with honors of any kind.
The school newspaper also notes that the university’s online alumni database lists 366 graduates of its business school in 1968; therefore, not being named among the top 56 means that Trump didn’t “graduate first in his class,” as he’s reportedly claimed in past interviews.
The Pennsylvanian also found several of Trump’s former classmates, whose observations seem to reflect the man in the White House today.
Louis Calomaris, a 1968 Wharton graduate, recalled that “Don ... was loath to really study much.” He said that Trump would come to study groups unprepared and did not “seem to care about being prepared.”
He added that Trump’s academic passivity likely stemmed from his passion for engaging directly in the real estate business.
This notion of being more focused on actually doing business than his business studies was confirmed by other classmates who said he often went to New York City to work in commercial real estate, which “is a weekend business.”
1968 Wharton graduate Edward Pollard described Trump as “very professional” and “different from the rest of the class.”
Read more at the Daily Pennsylvanian.