Pushy oaf Donald Trump has expanded his trenchant critique of Barack Obama's policy agenda: He's now wondering how Obama, a "terrible, terrible student," got into Columbia University and later Harvard Law School.
And he's got a point. I mean, he is black. Not being born in America, Obama was obviously far too dim and lazy to gain entrance to our nation's finest Ivy League institutions by dint of his own smarts and hard work. He was clearly being groomed, and strings were being pulled—maybe by the Kenyan mafia?
"I heard he was a terrible student, terrible," Trump told The Associated Press.
"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."
Yeah, how does a terrible student get into Harvard? Let's ask Daniel Golden, the author of The Price of Admission, a 2006 book about how rich people buy admission to elite schools for their children:
In 1998, according to two sources familiar with the gift, [New York real estate magnate Charles Kushner] pledged $2.5 million to Harvard, to be paid in annual installments of $250,000....
At the time of the pledge, Kushner's older son, Jared, was was starting the college admissions process at the Frisch School, a Jewish high school in Paramus, N.J. A senior in 1998-99, Jared was not in the school's highest academic track in all courses, and his test scores were well below Ivy League standards. Frisch officials were surprised when he applied to Harvard—and dismayed when he was admitted.
"There was no way anybody in the administrative office of the school thought he would on the merits get into Harvard," a former school official told me. "His GPA did not warrant it, has SAT scores did not warrant it. We thought for sure, there was no way this was going to happen. Then lo and behold, Jared was accepted."
OK! So that's how lazy and not-too-bright kids—in this case Donald Trump's future son-in-law Jared Kushner, who is married to Trump's daughter Ivanka—get into Ivy League schools. We think this actually could be an asset for Trump. It humanizes the issue—the scourge of stupid layabouts who scam themselves into the Ivy League is so widespread that it's touched even his own family!
Trump ought to sic those investigators of his on this case and find out if Obama was raised by insanely wealthy people.
Kushner did not immediately respond to an e-mail asking what he thought of his father-in-law's comments.
[Photo of Donald Trump via Getty Images. Photo of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump via Billy Farrell Agency]