Donald Trump does not seem to be the kind of man burdened by hypocrisy.
Calling President Barack Obama “the least transparent president in the history of this country” back in 2012, Trump offered to give $5 million to the charity of the president’s choosing if he released his college application and transcript.
“The check will be given within one hour after he releases all of the records,” Trump declared in a video.
But now that Trump himself is a candidate for president, he is not exactly volunteering the same transparency he once demanded of Obama. Asked by The Daily Caller if Trump was willing to release his college records before he officially entered the race for the White House, a spokesman for Trump said Team Trump would “pass” on the opportunity in April. Emails Tuesday and Wednesday to the Trump campaign to see if the candidate had reconsidered now that he is officially a candidate went unreturned.
Trump’s refusal to release his transcript is especially peculiar since he regularly touts his brilliance and phenomenal college success on the campaign trail.
“I went to the Wharton School of Business,” Trump routinely notes during campaign speeches. “I’m, like, a really smart person.”
He often adds, as he did in a recent speech in Las Vegas attended by TheDC, that Wharton is the best business school in the country and that he did great there.
And yet, for some reason, Trump doesn’t want to show the American people just how great he did.
Trump’s college history is a bit more complex than he usually volunteers. He started his college career at Fordham University, before transferring to the University of Pennsylvania, where he received a bachelor’s degree from the Ivy League university’s Wharton business school in 1968. Trump did not receive a master’s in business administration from Wharton.
As Salon reported in 2011 when it investigated Trump’s claims of academic success, there is some evidence that Trump was able to transfer to Wharton, at least in part, because his late brother’s friend was on the admissions committee. Without seeing his transcript and Board scores, it’s impossible to say whether Trump got into Wharton mainly on his own merit or mostly because of family connections.
As for Trump being a top student at Wharton, a 1984 New York Times story points out that a program from his 1968 commencement did not list him as being awarded any honors.
If Trump just authorized the release of his college transcript, all these questions could be more easily answered.